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CDFURIGHT DEPOStT 



PROGRESS IN 
CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



BY 

Samuel Charles Black, D. D. 

Pastor Collingwood Avenue Presbyterian 
Church, Toledo, Ohio 

Author of 

"Plain Answers to Religious Questions 
Modern Men Are Asking" 

"Building a Working Church" 

Etc. 




Philadelphia 

The Westminster Press 

1912 






Copyright 19 12 

By the Trustees of the Presbyterian Board of 

Publication and Sabbath-School Work 



©CU328261 



TO THE HALLOWED MEMORY OF MY 

WHO GAVE ME FIRST MY LIFE AND 
THEN, BY PRECEPT AND BY EXAMPLE, 
MY CLEAREST AND BROADEST CONCEP- 
TION OF CHRISTIAN LIVING, THIS BOOK 
IS HUMBLY AND GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

CHAP. PAGE 

1. BY SELF-EXAMINATION AND CORRECTION 9 

2. BY BIBLE STUDY 24 

3. BY PRAYER 39 

4. BY SACRIFICE 55 

5. BY SERVICE 70 

6. BY SELF-CONTROL ."...." 83 

7. BY FORGETTING 100 

8. BY REMEMBERING 116 

9. BY THOUGHT AND MEDITATION 131 

10. BY PERSEVERANCE, EXPERIENCE, CAUTION, 

HOPE 142 

11. BY RESISTING TEMPTATION 153 

12. BY PROPER SABBATH OBSERVANCE 167 

13. BY DECISION 182 

14. THE TIME LIMIT ON CHRISTIAN PROGRESS 198 



AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 

This book bears a close relation to "Plain An- 
swers to Religious Questions Modern Men Are 
Asking." The earlier volume bore on salvation, — 
how the individual and his associates may be saved. 
"Progress in Christian Culture" bears on sanctifica- 
tion, : — how the saved Christian may acquire the 
graces of his Lord. 

Christian Culture has never yet had the attention 
it must have before the days of ideal Christianity 
arrive. We have rightly emphasized the vital nature 
of redemption. Many have felt that the Christian, 
assured of eternal life by his confession of faith in 
the Saviour, could disregard lesser things. We do 
not think so to-day. We are insisting that Christian 
men shall be Christian gentlemen in the best sense 
of that old-fashioned word; that they shall com- 
mend the Gospel they profess to believe by the life 
they lead. 

Growth in grace comes in old-fashioned ways. 
Soul culture comes not from worldly experiences. 
Bible Study, Prayer, Self -Sacrifice and Christian 
Service are four pillars by which the chaste structure 
of Christian Culture is upheld; they make up the 
rich soil out of which the blossoming, fruit-bearing 
tree of Christian Culture grows. There are other 

7 



AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 

contributing elements, many of which I have 
endeavored to set forth in the following pages. 

The active Christian should possess a very attrac- 
tive personality. Faith should make him strong. 
Altruism should make him unselfish. Self-control 
should make him temperate. Prayer should make 
him spiritual. Bible study should give him posses- 
sion of the best thoughts of God and men. Cer- 
tainty of eternal life should make him happy in all 
situations. The Christian who has not these vir- 
tues should strive after them continually. It is the 
earnest hope of the author that the chapters in this 
book will help. 

Technicalities have again been avoided. The book 
is for the people who, in the main, are not versed 
in the theological aspects of the subjects treated but 
who wish, in all their reading, to be well within the 
limits of orthodoxy. 

In vision the author beholds a church trans- 
figured by the strength and beauty of our Lord. If 
she is the bride of the Lamb, let her put on wedding 
garments. If sobriety and fidelity are factors in her 
world conquest, let her know that to acquire the 
graces of Jesus will add infinitely to her drawing 
power. Paul knew the value of this and evermore 
admonished his spiritual sons : "Be ye imitators of 
me, even as I also am of Christ." The next for- 
ward step of the church should be in Christian Cul- 
ture. S. C. B. 

Toledo, August, 191 2. 
8 



Progress in Christian Culture 



Chapter One 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: BY 
SELF-EXAMINATION AND CORRECTION 

Every human life, no matter what its state, is 
visited by frequent convictions that it is neither as 
strong nor as noble as it ought to be and that whole- 
some corrections are in order. The frequency and 
force of these convictions will depend somewhat 
upon age and condition; they may be entertained 
or instantly rejected, but they come, making their 
own silent appeal for better things. 

Life is rarely one gradual rise from infancy to 
age. It is rather a succession of ascents, often rapid 
for an hour or a day ; then comes a long, level road- 
way along which no elevation can be discovered. 
Ascents usually follow times of careful self-exami- 
nation. "For a man to know his faults and errors," 
says one, "is the first step toward what is better 
and nobler." As the sight of sickness and disease 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

always moves us to seek health, so the consciousness 
of personal weakness or sin drives us toward 
strength and righteousness. 

Self-examination often fails of beneficial results 
because the examiner is sure to be more generous 
with himself than anybody else would be. His 
judgment is warped by his desires. He is wont to 
allow himself indulgences which he would deny 
others. Mohammed contended that, because of the 
arduous labors he was asked to perform, Allah al- 
lowed him many special indulgences and multiplied 
his powers of enjoyment. The result of this self- 
favoring is seen in the sensuous and material 
pleasures promised the faithful in the Moslem para- 
dise. 

It is so easy to persuade oneself that hereditary 
encumbrances or enforced relations in society entitle 
him to more than the average mortal receives of 
what we are wont to call "the good things of this 
world." A western banker — on trial for appro- 
priating a surplus to his own use, when by law it 
belonged to a body of stockholders — said he believed 
himself entitled to the money inasmuch as he had 
built up the business. Many a man, looking at his 
own life, has a similar feeling. He asks all other 
men to be scrupulously honest, commendably pure, 
humble and self-effacing, self-denying and filled 
with brotherly kindness, but because he has built up 
his own fortune, and because of his peculiar circum- 
stances, he believes he is entitled to shade these re- 

10 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

quirements noticeably in his own case. Deep down 
in his heart he knows this is little and mean and 
he feels ashamed, but he keeps a bold front and will 
defend his selfish indulgences with loud voice and 
the air of one who is being unjustly persecuted 
by the world. 

To be of any value self-examination must be car- 
ried on in a spirit of absolute candor. So far as 
possible the personal equation, and particularly the 
selfish equation, must be eliminated. While we 
should not be unjust, we should be as exacting of 
ourselves as we would be of another. We should be 
the cross-examiner for the prosecution and not the 
favoring lawyer for the defense. If we are Chris- 
tians we should follow the admonition of the great 
poet and do the work, "As ever under our great 
Taskmaster's eye." 

And now, if we are ready to proceed, what shall 
the examination cover? For purposes of clearness 
and convenience we may divide the work into two 
or three parts, considering first the question of our 
conduct. By universal agreement we understand this 
to cover "our mode of performing our ordinary life 
duties ; the character of our relationship with others ; 
the wise use of our opportunities for serving others; 
the proper occupation of our leisure hours; the 
worthy meeting of our life responsibilities." 

Let us imagine a man who has been allowing his 
life to drift with the social current of his day. He 
has been easy and generous with himself, inwardly 

ii 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

contending, although never openly stating, that he 
believes he is entitled to the best things he can pro- 
cure. He works hard and so argues that he has 
a right to exact a good deal of others. The graces 
of life he has neglected to cultivate, and he is mag- 
nanimous for revenue only. He makes an occasional 
sacrifice, but only when it is sure to be witnessed 
by a large and sympathetic audience. 

Naturally he is not oversensitive about his per- 
sonal conduct, and — while he lauds purity and per- 
sonal virtue as necessary for the safeguarding of 
our moral and ethical standards — he does not allow 
this to stand in the way of his own selfish desires. 
Such a man is usually -successful in business and 
therefore has money in sufficient quantities to sup- 
ply all his wants. His standing in the community 
is very good. True, the prudish reformers look with 
horror on some of his selfish indulgences, but that 
is their fault and not his. He has never committed 
murder and he has committed theft only in harmony 
with the most approved twentieth century practices. 
He is a healthy, free-and-easy, self -gratifying, God- 
neglecting sort of individual, such as can be found 
in large numbers in every city. 

If such a man ever begins to examine himself 
on his own initiative he usually begins to compare 
his life with that of other men whom he knows. 
How vastly superior he is ! Like the Pharisee in 
the temple, he thanks God that he is not as other 
men, extortioners, blackmailers, adulterers. He 

12 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

pays his bills regularly, never fails to vote as his 
party managers dictate and talks much of patriotism. 
While he does not follow the outgrown custom of 
fasting twice in the week or paying tithes of all 
he possesses, he is careful about what he eats lest 
he suffer from ptomaine poisoning, and he does not 
gormandize for fear of the gout! Altogether he is 
a most commendable fellow whom God should be 
very glad and proud to have among his creatures in 
this runaway world ! 

The first mistake this man makes is clear : he has 
compared his conduct with that of other men, and 
they not the best that could be found, instead of 
with the great Example whom God sent as the 
standard for all lives. Any standard lower than 
the life of Jesus is sure to be faulty and lead us into 
error. He is the only model the sculptor of life 
dares to follow. Follow his faith, his conduct, his 
spirit of helpfulness and sacrifice, and your life 
will be as God wants it to be ; follow those of other 
men and it is sure to fail. 

But the second mistake this man makes is quite 
as bad : it is the spirit in which his self-examination, 
or rather his comparison of self with other men, is 
made. He has been a biased witness; he started 
out to acquit himself and he gloriously succeeded. 
When the prodigal son came to himself in the far 
country it was to cry out, "Father, I have sinned 
against heaven, and in thy sight: I am no more 

13 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

worthy to be called thy son." It was the great, 
generous-hearted father who acquitted him. 

When David was driven to self-examination he 
began : 

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving- 
kindness : 

According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out 
my transgressions. 

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, 

And cleanse me from my sin. 

For I know my transgressions; 

And my sin is ever before me. . . . 

Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean : 

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 

And at another time, equally moved, he cried out : 

O Jehovah, thou hast searched me, and known me. 
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; 
Thou understandest my thought afar off. 
Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, 
And art acquainted with all my ways. 
For there is not a word in my tongue, 
But, lo, O Jehovah, thou knowest it altogether. 
Thou hast beset me behind and before, 
And laid thy hand upon me. . . . 
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? 
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : 
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, 
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 
Even there shall thy hand lead me, 

14 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

And thy right hand shall hold me. . . . 
Search me, O God, and know my heart : 
Try me, and know my thoughts ; 
And see if there be any wicked way in me, 
And lead me in the way everlasting. 

This action on .the part of David is full of sug- 
gestion for every one of us; open up your life 
frankly before God and let him do the examining. 
There will be no mistake made. While he will 
condemn all that is bad he will rejoice in all that is 
good and you will at least feel that you are on 
good terms with him, as a child after chastisement 
is happy to be again on good terms with an earthly 
parent. 

Most of us will need also to examine ourselves at 
the point of our faith. This is the power by which 
we take hold on God. Spiritual things will not all 
submit to the processes of reason; the great things 
of the soul, — life, death, immortality, — cannot be 
worked through and understood like a mathemati- 
cal problem. Many men are making their greatest 
mistake right at this point. They are insisting that 
before they accept Christ and become Christians 
they be made to understand everything connected 
with it. They refuse to allow their children to 
enter the church because, they say, they do not 
understand all that is involved. 

The answer can only be: Nobody understands 
everything about God, about Christ, about the 
Christian life. They all transcend human under- 

15 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

standing; but that is not to say that they are not 
exactly as presented in the Bible and as revealed 
in the experiences of Christians of all ages. These 
great facts of the spiritual world we must accept 
by faith. God has never yet failed a soul that 
freely accepted him and he never will, for his nature 
does not change. Instead of insisting upon a com- 
plete physical or mental demonstration of the exist- 
ence o£ God and the deity of Jesus Christ we 
should occupy the position of the poet who so con- 
fidently sang: 

I do not ask to see the way 

My feet will have to tread; 
But only that my soul may feed 

Upon the living- bread. 
'Tis better far that I should walk 

By faith close to his side, — 
I may not know the way to go, 

But, oh, I know my Guide. 

And also of that early singer who cried so 
exultantly : 

O gift of gifts ! O grace of faith ! 

My God, how c'an it be 
That thou, who hast discerning love, 

Shouldst give that gift to me? 

How can they live, how will they die, 

How bear the cross of grief, 
Who have not yet the light of faith, 

The courage of belief? 

16 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

The crowd of cares, the weightiest cross, 

Seem trifles less than light; 
Earth looks so little and so low 

When faith shines full and bright. 

O happy, happy that I am ! 

If thou canst be, O faith, 
The treasure that thou art in life, 

What wilt thou be in death? 

There is only one way to leap the chasm of mys- 
tery between man and God, between temporary 
physical life and eternal spiritual life. That is by 
faith. Believe the Bible. Believe what it says about 
the plan of salvation, about immortality. You want 
these things to be so; the Bible says they are so; 
all human experience points toward their verifica- 
tion. Then kill all doubt by openly and frankly 
accepting them and believing them. 

But the vital thing in our religion is our personal 
relationship to Jesus Christ. At this point we may 
well examine ourselves as Paul challenged the 
Corinthians to do. If we demand fine things in 
others do we have them in our own life? If we 
demand that others have Christ in their lives can we 
prove that we have him in ours? 

An enlightening story is told of a young man 
from the middle west who entered a great eastern 
university. His preparation had been exceptional. 
Entrance examinations were taken with ease and 
the word went around that here was the best pre- 
. 17 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

pared freshman that ever entered the university. 
Added to this, the youth was a devout Christian. 
He was handsome and well mannered and at once 
began to attract unusual attention. 

It is hardly to be wondered that such a man would 
stir up some envy and jealousy. Professors openly 
commended him; the pastor of the church he at- 
tended referred to him as the most promising man 
he had ever met. His triumph seemed assured when 
to his amazement erstwhile friends began to look 
askance at him and some to treat him with un- 
mistakable coldness. Clearly there was a change of 
attitude in his associates for which he could find no 
explanation. 

At the time this remarkable youth entered the 
university another young man from the same town 
matriculated. He was the son of a rich and overfond 
parents who had done everything for their boy except 
give him enough attention to raise him right. He 
was small-souled and dull-witted and immediately 
began to have trouble in making his grades. He 
saw the humble youth from his own town sail past 
him as a cup-winning yacht passes a mud scow, and 
his small soul was enraged. So he began to insin- 
uate : "If I should tell all I know, my fine young 
man would not hold his head so high. I could 
make his boasted Christianity hang its head in 
shame. If these professors and church people knew 
what I know they would withhold their flatteries 

18 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

and guard their daughters." When particulars were 
demanded he wagged his head and said he thought 
he had better say no more. Seeing at last that his 
vague insinuations were falling harmless, he came 
out openly and charged the brilliant youth with the 
ruin of a simple-minded orphan girl who had sub- 
sequently died of humiliation and a broken heart. 

At last the strange and groundless tale reached 
the ears of the brilliant freshman. It was like a 
blow from a woodman's ax. Stunned at first be- 
yond speech, he did not even deny the accusation, 
but started in the early evening to the room of his 
townsman to ask him quietly what he meant by it 
all. When the lying youth opened his door and saw 
the man he had wronged standing there in all the 
majesty of his unspoiled manhood, he cried out, 
"My God, Stimson, don't kill me!" and started to 
rush past him and escape. "No," said the honest 
youth, "stay here. I want to have a talk with you." 
Frightened beyond self-control the weakling turned 
into his room, rushed through an open French win- 
dow and leaped two stories to the ground below. 
He fell among shrubbery which scratched and tore 
his tender skin and, striking the ground head first, 
suffered a broken arm and shoulder blade. 

When he regained consciousness Stimson was 
standing over him. "What in the world did you do 
this for, Johnnie? I did not come to harm you. 
While I have noticed a change in the attitude of all 

19 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

around me, I was unwilling to believe you were tell- 
ing the story they say you were telling and came to 
find out from your own lips. Come, let me carry 
you to the hospital. We must have these injuries 
dressed." "No," said the suffering youth, "call a 
doctor and start me for home. When you tell what 
you know about me, I had better be dead than be 
here. I have said you were guilty of the crime I 
committed back home two years ago." 

"But, Johnnie," said the Christian, "I do not 
intend to tell what I know either here or back home. 
Why should I blast your life? I think you have 
suffered enough already at the court of your own 
conscience. I am ready to nurse you back to health 
and keep my lips closed." 

As the stricken youth came slowly back to normal 
strength in the university hospital he had time to 
think much and long. Calling a classmate to his 
cot one day he said : "George, tell the boys for me 
that what I said about Stimson is not true. He is 
a man from the sole of his foot to his crown and 
he is the best Christian I ever knew. He beats the 
good Samaritan, for he not only saves a man's body, 
but he saves his soul also. He is an incarnation of 
Christianity." 

Would your Christianity reveal itself similarly 
in a crisis time? The phrase of Dr. Grenfell is 
significant : "When you start out to commend your 
gospel you are not simply to announce it as a good 

20 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

thing, or to urge others to adopt it that they may 
be more agreeable to you, but to commend it to them 
by what it has obviously done for you." Are you 
proving to the world that you have Christ in your 
life by what you do as well as by what you say? 
Are men drawn to Christ by what they see he has 
done for you? 

When the self -examining here proposed is fin- 
ished, are you going to stop there? If you do, all 
your hard and unwelcome work has been for naught. 
Self-examination lends itself to progress only when 
you immediately act upon what you discover about 
your life. If your conduct is not up to Christian 
standards, bring it up. Do not wait for outside 
forces to work the change. Do the good work your- 
self. If your faith in God and his providence is 
weak ; if it does not support you in time of crisis and 
make all life beautiful and your hope for the future 
radiant, go back to your Bible and to the lives of 
the saints. Read what the Book says and note how 
the saints lived. Test God at the point of his prom- 
ises and see that he never fails. Dwell with him in 
communion; work for him in meeting the needs 
of his earthly children. Leave transcendentalism 
and German philosophy alone. They are as empty 
as the rain barrel in midsummer and as lifeless. 
Spend much time with God and do much work 
for men, and your faith will grow as a garden in 
springtime and its fruits will be as rich and 
nourishing. 

21 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

If you find your hold on Christ as the Son of 
God and the Saviour of the world is weak and un- 
fruitful, go back to his life on earth and study it 
deeply. In his marvelous little book recently re- 
printed, Peter Bayne says Jesus Christ is the best 
witness for Christianity. You cannot know him 
intimately and still reject him. He is rejected only 
by those who do not know him or by those whose 
knowledge of him is superficial. Those best quali- 
fied to speak join eagerly with Paul when he says, 
"Christ in you, the hope of glory." 

Get more and more of Christ's fine spirit into 
your life. Study the prophecies concerning his com- 
ing; study his life and his matchless teachings : study 
his influence on society for nineteen hundred years ; 
compare Christian nations with non-Christian na- 
tions and account for their superiority ; be honest in 
the acceptance of obvious conclusions and then de- 
termine that, since Christ is what he is, since he has 
done what he has for individuals and nations, you 
will stop quibbling and doubting and accept him 
openly as your Saviour. 

Do not allow a few unanswerable questions or 
the fatuous harangues of a few blatant infidels to 
rob you of your Lord. Accept Abraham Lincoln's 
advice to Joshua Speed about the Bible, 'Take all 
of this Book that you can on reason and the rest on 
faith and you will live and die a better man." Deter- 
mine that your religion is going to mean something 
to you and every life you can influence; plunge into 

22 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

the work of the church, saying that, while you feel 
your weakness and inability, you are willing to try, 
being determined to do what you can for the uplift 
of men and the advancement of the kingdom of God 
while your powers are fresh and keen, and all your 
life will become beautiful and yourself a growing 
factor in Christ's conquest of the world. 



23 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Two 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY BIBLE STUDY 

The ambition to go higher which our Creator has 
planted in every man moves him to search on every 
hand for forces that uplift. One is not enough. He 
has discovered that there are many. Night and day 
he plies hand and heart and brain that he may pos- 
sess again the godlike qualities of knowledge, right- 
eousness and true holiness which he had in such 
large measure on the day of his creation. 

Every instructed mind is sure that among the 
forces that make for higher righteousness none is 
so powerful as genuine Christianity and that, to be 
a right Christian, he must be possessed of the mar- 
velous contents of the Word of God; its supreme 
revelations; its examples of lofty righteousness; its 
stern calls to duty; its sublime utterances of faith 
and worship ; its matchless story of the Saviour and 
his appeal to men to walk in his footsteps. No man, 
possessed of all this wealth of divine truth, can with- 
stand its upward pull. 

And all this is by no means to deny that other 
literature has a high cultural value. The moral 

24 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

teachings of Socrates and the lofty life philosophy 
of Plato have done much for the uplift of the race. 
Pagan literatures from all nations yield many gems 
of great moral value, but it is far from heartening 
to observe that where a people have had nothing 
but these they have declined rather than advanced 
in higher culture. One can hardly go into ecstasies 
over the literature of Buddhism and Confucianism 
when the result of them is modern India and 
modern China. 

James Freeman Clarke in his "Ten Great Reli- 
gions" tells of an enthusiast over pagan sacred 
writings who said that while he kept all of these 
non-Christian writings on one side of his desk he 
kept the Bible on the other side, and that for solid 
value and cultural power the Bible far outweighs 
them all. 

In harmony with this is the statement by a now 
lamented Bible scholar 1 before the Ecumenical 
Council a few years ago : 

The Christian apologist may fearlessly invite the compari- 
son which is being already so widely made between the Bible 
and other sacred books. He need not fear it. The Bible does 
evidence itself as such a revelation as God might make, 
while the sacred books of other religions run off into meta- 
physical abstractions or grotesque puerilities or mere ethics. 
We need to press the comparison, only being careful that 
the whole Bible with its progressive and unified system of 

1 George T. Purves, D.D. 

25 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

truth is put into the hands of the pagan world. Testimony 
is abundant that there is no better defense of Christianity 
than the Bible itself. 

Discussing the question of the elevation and 
Christianization of the Mohammedans, Rev. C. T. 
Wilson, a missionary from Palestine, said at the 
same conference: "First of all, we should press 
the circulation of God's Word, especially in the 
sacred Arabic tongue. The rapid growth of educa- 
tion in the East is enabling many people to read it 
for themselves, while the efforts of the Turks to 
stop its circulation have been overruled to facili- 
tate it." 

Missionaries in every quarter of the world are 
telling us constantly of natives who come to them 
from distant parts of the countries in which they 
are working already converted and asking for 
Christian baptism. On inquiry it is found that in 
some way the converted ones came into possession 
of a leaf or a portion of the Bible. The marvelous 
story, read in their own tongue, has laid hold upon 
their hearts and the Holy Spirit has led them to the 
Saviour. 

But we are hearing of cases where the Bible and 
other Christian literature is affecting the life of 
whole nations — and these the nations one would 
least expect. Rev. George Owen, a missionary to 
China, told a wonderful story a few years ago 
which I give very largely in his own words : 

26 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

What I have to tell you I can tell you at first hand from 
my own experience and observation. The year 1898 will, I 
think, be one of the most memorable in the long history of 
China. A great reform party arose, with the Emperor at its 
head, and took in hand the reconstruction of China after 
foreign models and under Christian influences. Among the 
leaders of that movement were some of China's most brilliant 
scholars and a few of her ablest and highest officials. The 
bulk of the party consisted of the young literary men, 
officials, merchants and gentry. Young China rallied to the 
cry of reform. Early in January, 1898, we were startled in 
Peking by the report that the Emperor had sent to the 
American Bible and Tract Depot and ordered a copy of the 
Bible and a copy of every tract and book that the depot 
could supply him for his own reading. These books were 
passed into the palace, and early and late you might have 
seen the Emperor of China, the master of four hundred mil- 
lions of men, bending eagerly over those books and absorbing 
their contents. The report that the Emperor had become a 
student of Christian literature soon spread through Peking, 
and from Peking was carried to every part of the empire. 
The news gave great joy to all Christian workers, and from 
all parts of China wherever there was a Christian man or 
woman there went up an earnest prayer on behalf of the 
Emperor that, as he pored over the sacred page, or read some 
of the books explaining it, light from God should shine upon 
it. As we prayed an answer in part fell, for at the end of 
January an edict was issued sanctioning the establishment of 
a great national university in Peking based on foreign models 
and equipped with a staff of foreign professors. Many 
edicts followed, all breathing a liberal spirit and creating an 
atmosphere new in China. Among those edicts was one in 
which the Emperor lamented the frequency of attacks on 
Christian missions, and the officials were instructed to see 
that those attacks cease, and, moreover, to see that his Chris- 
tian subjects should not suffer for their faith in Christ. Some 

27 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

of the leading reformers would fain have gone further, giving 
full toleration to Christianity on a level with Confucianism, 
Buddhism and Taoism ; and some of the stalwarts went so 
far as to urge the adoption of Christianity as the national 
religion. 

This reform movement, and the example of the 
Emperor, was widely followed among the literary 
men, and there sprang up a demand for Christian 
literature. Men were eager to get books on the 
religion, the history, the science, the politics and 
the institutions of the West. There arose a new 
cry out there, "Light, more light!" 

Many will remember that the Empress Dowager, 
encouraged by conservative supporters, soon rose 
up against these reforms, but it was the folly of 
Chanute, who would stay the incoming tides of 
the sea. By a strange coincidence she and the 
Emperor whom she had so completely dominated 
died within a few hours of each other and the long- 
bound empire passed into younger and more pro- 
gressive hands. 

Now the monarchy is overthrown and the most 
conservative of nations begins her career as a re- 
public. She will not have an easy time. Enemies 
within and without will continue to make trouble, 
but as Greater China gathers strength from her 
growing knowledge of God's Word her power will 
increase until, before the present century is past, 
the "Sleeping Giant" will be well to the fore among 
the leading nations of the world. 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Without doubt the most notable instance of 
national transformation and regeneration by the 
power of the Bible the world has thus far seen 
was that of England. Liberated from the close 
guardianship of Rome and the restraining bars of 
the Latin tongue by its translation into the vernacu- 
lar by Wycliffe in the closing years of the four- 
teenth century, the Bible began to undermine the 
faith of the people in the cardinal doctrines of the 
Catholic faith : transubstantiation, the mass, the 
confession, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages to 
the shrines of saints, worship of their images, wor- 
ship of the saints themselves. These doctrines were 
successively attacked by Wycliffe and his followers 
and repudiated by thousands. 

"A formal appeal to the Bible as the ground of 
faith," says the historian Green, "coupled with an 
assertion of the right of every instructed man to 
examine the Bible for himself, threatened the very 
groundwork of the older dogmatism with ruin." 

But the power of church and state, both op- 
posed to the individual liberty fostered by the Bible, 
soon suppressed the Wycliffe heresies and for nearly 
a century and a half they lay smoldering in the 
hearts of a rebellious people. Early in the six- 
teenth century the work of Luther began to shake 
again the foundations of Rome. Then William 
Tyndale arose and put the New Testament into the 
hands of the common people. "He perceived," says 
the historian, "how impossible it was to establish 

29 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

the lay people in any truth except the Scriptures 
were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother 
tongue." "If God spares my life," he said to a 
learned controversialist, "ere many years I will cause 
a boy that driveth a plow shall know more of the 
Scriptures than thou dost." So great was the hos- 
tility of Rome to the young scholar's plans that, — 
from 1524 to 1526, when his efforts were crowned 
with success, — Tyndale passed through "poverty, 
exile, bitter absence from friends, hunger and thirst 
and cold, great dangers and innumerable other hard 
and sharp fightings." 

In 1526 six thousand copies of the New Testa- 
ment reached England and instantly created the 
greatest consternation. King and priest alike de- 
nounced the Book, but the people took it to their 
hearts and the liberation of men's mind and soul 
at once began. 

The Bible became the most studied book in Eng- 
land and at once began to raise the people from 
serfdom to sovereignty. Of a slightly later period 
the historian says further: "For a hundred years 
past men had been living in the midst of a spiritual 
revolution. Not only the world about them but 
the world of thought and feeling within every breast 
had been utterly transformed. The work of the six- 
teenth century had wrecked that tradition of reli- 
gion, of knowledge, of political and social order 
which had been accepted without question by the 
middle ages. The sudden freedom of the mind 

30 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

from these older bonds brought a consciousness of 
power that had never been felt before; and the 
restless energy, the universal activity of the renais- 
sance, were but outer expressions of the pride, the 
joy, the amazing .self-confidence with which man 
welcomed this revelation of the energies which had 
lain slumbering within him. . . . From that 
hour one dominant influence told on human action ; 
and all the various energies that had been called 
into life by the age that was passing away were 
seized, concentrated and steadied to a definite aim 
by the spirit of religion." 

The popularity of the Bible was growing every 
passing day. When copies were set up in St. Pauls 
scores flocked to their reading, listening intently to 
anyone who could make their meaning plain. The 
small Genevan Bibles now began to appear and 
one was found in every awakened home. 

No less was the influence of the Bible on the 
intellectual life of the people. "So far as the nation 
at large was concerned, no history, no romance, 
hardly any poetry, save the little-known verse of 
Chaucer, existed in the English tongue when the 
Bible was ordered to be set up in the churches. 
Sunday after Sunday, day after day, the crowds 
that gathered around the Bible in the nave of St. 
Pauls, or the family group that hung on its words 
in the devotional exercises at home, were leavened 
with a new literature." 

But far greater than the effect of the Bible on 
3i 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

literature or social life was its effect on the char- 
acter of the people at large. "The Bible was as yet 
the one book which was familiar to every English- 
man ; and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears 
which custom had not deadened to their force and 
beauty, kindled a startling enthusiasm. The whole 
moral effect which is produced nowadays by the 
religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the mis- 
sionary report, the sermon, was then produced by 
the Bible alone, and its effect in this way, however 
dispassionately we examine it, was simply amazing. 
The whole nation became a church." 

This enthusiasm for the Bible resulted in the Puri- 
tanism which gave to the world modern England 
and the American republic as well. The influence 
of the Bible in producing the highest civilization the 
world has yet reached simply cannot be measured. 
The Bible is the foundation, structure, capstone; 
aye, it is the very essence of the highest life the 
world has ever seen. 

The Bible has lost none of its power. What it 
did for our ancestors in Europe four hundred years 
ago it will do for any man to-day who will give 
time to its mastery. All its wealth of revelation, all 
its nobility of thought, all its richness of song and 
story, all its upward pull on the heart are open to 
him who will devote a few moments a day to the 
study of its pages. 

First of all we should study the life of Jesus 
and the teaching of the Epistles to learn how to live. 

32 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Strange that man is so slow in learning that which 
means most to his progress and culture. Jesus knew 
how to live. We may safely accept him as our 
model. He is the one man that ever walked the 
earth who fully satisfied the heart of God. He is 
God's idea of what a man should be. 

From the example and teaching of Jesus as given 
in the Bible we learn that it is the will of our 
Creator that we live simply and keep our bodies 
and our minds pure. Jesus was no ascetic, yet he 
dressed simply, ate the plainest food and often slept 
with only the canopy of heaven for a covering. 
When Martha of Bethany was struggling to get up 
an elaborate meal in his honor and complained that 
Mary left her with all the work to do, he gently 
rebuked this woman that he loved, saying that one 
simple dish would be enough and that many things 
were more important than a superabundance of 
food. 

According to the teaching and example of Jesus, 
the highest achievement any man can boast is to 
retain to the period of life's storm and stress the 
purity and innocence of childhood. Let us not for- 
get that when the rich and powerful crowded around 
him Christ took a little child and, setting him in 
the midst of the company where all could gaze into 
his unclouded eyes, said that except they became as 
little children they should not enter the kingdom of 
heaven. 

Passing by the physical, the Bible again teaches 
33 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

man what his attitude should be toward other men. 
Hatred, jealousy and envy filled the world when 
Jesus came into it. Every man's hand was against 
every other man. To his friends even man was 
treacherous and toward his enemies a flame of fire. 
Men knew not the meaning of brotherhood. 

Jesus said: "I know that the old teaching has 
been eye for eye. tooth for tooth, blow for blow, 
life for life ; but it is all wrong. God has made of 
one blood all nations of men ; we must live together 
in peace and unity, each concerned for the other's 
welfare. Therefore I say unto you, Love not only 
your friends, love your enemies and do them good. 
Be like God in the magnificence of your loving and 
forgiving." A right following of Jesus would stop 
man's inhumanity to man and put an end to ingrati- 
tude. Universal love would mean universal joy 
and an end to social unrest and discord. 

But the love-life emphasized by Jesus benefits not 
the object of the affections alone; it helps quite 
as much the life that loves. Hatred is an acid that 
eats out all the finer qualities of life. Modern litho- 
graphers have an acid so keen that it eats away 
lines stenciled by the sun on the hardest granite. 
Cherishing of hatred cuts the keen edge off of 
character as rust dulls the razor's edge. Great as 
he was, Michelangelo would have gone higher 
but for the hatred he cherished for certain artists 
and rulers of his day. The one flaw in his great 
painting of the Last Judgment is the distorted face 

34 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

and figure of an enemy which he painted in for 
spite. A man may paint his enemy as the Devil, 
but a worse devil is the enmity that prompted the 
deed. 

From the writings of Paul we learn more par- 
ticulars touching our daily living. The twelfth 
chapter of Romans is a veritable mine of good 
counsel. We are to live peaceably with all men; 
we are to speak no evil word; we are to extend all 
Christian hospitality to those about us. No form 
of theft is to be tolerated, whether by house-breaking 
or by law-breaking, but all are to work honestly 
for daily bread, earning enough for ourselves and 
having something to give to the less fortunate 
around us who may be in need. From Paul's 
Epistles we learn also that our bodies are temples 
for the indwelling of the spirit of God; that they 
must not be defiled but kept pure for the service 
of the soul. 

Every social question that may arise will find 
its answer, if one will but look with knowing eyes, 
in the Word of God. 

To quicken and enlarge one's devotional and 
spiritual life there is no writing so effectual as the 
Psalms of David. As upon unseen wings the soul 
soars as the student repeats and meditates upon: 

} 

O Jehovah, our Lord, 

How excellent is thy name in all the earth, 

Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens ! 

35 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established 

strength, 
Because of thine adversaries, 

That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 
And the son of man, that thou visitest him? 
For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
And crownest him with glory and honor. 

Aii uplift of the soul cannot fail to be to him 
who joins the sweet singer in his soliloquy: 

I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: 
From whence shall my help come? 

Or to him who reverently reads : 

As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, 
So Jehovah is round about his people 
From this time forth and for evermore. 

No guilty soul that reads the Psalms of David 
can refrain from crying out with him and securing 
cleansing thereby: 

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving- 
kindness : 

According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out 
my transgressions. 

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, 

And cleanse me from my sin. . . . 

Create in me a clean heart, O God; 

And renew a right spirit within me. 

36 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

As the bathe**, caught on the beach by the swiftly 
rising tide, is lifted first to his knees, then to his 
feet, then to the tips of his toes, until he is finally 
swallowed up in the all-engulfing sea, so the soul on 
the arid plains of life that begins to drink at the 
fount of divine revelation will soon be caught in 
its larger waters and borne upward and onward 
toward the great harbor of God. 

There remain histories and prophecies that speak 
of God's dealings with Israel and his plans for the 
future that stir the heart of the student to measures 
of faith and confidence of which he had not 
dreamed. Recall the majestic measures of Genesis, 
which declare the power of God in creation; the 
marvels of Exodus, which make the blood to stand 
still as one reads the tragedy of Pharaoh's court 
and then run on like a mill race in hope and anticipa- 
tion when the cruel monarch lets God's people go. 
Read of nation-building as well as character-build- 
ing in the wilderness ; battle- winning on the plains 
of Jericho; city-building in Judaea and Samaria, — 
all So obviously in some infinite plan for the 
advancement of the race that one is forced to believe 
an all-powerful God is back of it. 

Then there is the heart- wringing story of Joseph, 
at first repulsive and yet alive with human interest; 
then arresting, as incidents thicken; then inspiring, 
as the young hero resists temptation and climbs the 
ladder of success ; then faith-building and strength- 
ening, as the hand of God appears in the saving of 

37 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

his people. Soon the student begins to see that back 
of all human events there stands a purposeful and 
all-powerful God. 

When, through the eyes of inspired prophets, one 
looks toward the future and sees that God's plans are 
infinite, eternal and unchangeable, he cannot but 
cry out like Thomas of old, "My Lord and my 
God." 

Behold, then, this matchless volume as it rests 
in your hands to-day. The Bible has healed more 
broken hearts, restored more ruined lives, stirred to 
new measures of activity more arrested careers, 
given hope to more penitent hearts, lifted man more 
definitely toward God than all other known forces 
put together. Can you afford to neglect it? It 
opens its sacred pages invitingly before your eyes ; 
it bids you, like Lord Tennyson, drink deep at the 
open fountain of divine truth; it reveals to you the 
method of the new birth and opens a broad pathway 
to the matchless city of the soul, whose builder and 
maker is God. 



38 



PROGRESS IX CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Three 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY PRAYER 

It is with the greatest hesitancy that one begins to 
write openly of a thing so personal and precious as 
communion between a worshiper and his God. Of 
many things in our religion we may speak freely and 
much, but of this inner thing, this thing which 
makes religion a reality and by which we take hold 
on a spiritual God, one may not so speak. It can- 
not be minutely defined or fully bounded. While 
genuine prayer is always sincere, its quality will 
be determined by the faith and consecration of the 
worshiper; its power by his faith; its richness, not 
by his education, but by his consecration and 
devotion. 

But sacred as the whole subject is, there are cer- 
tain things which may be said about prayer, and 
perhaps which should be said. Rightly understood 
it is the most powerful possession of the Christian 
and — one despondently fears — is the least used. 
If a fuller understanding of its nature and place 
will help in the development of any Christian, then 

39 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

these words on a subject so transcendent will per- 
haps be pardoned. 

History and travel reveal to us that the practice 
of prayer is universal; every race, in every age, 
has had its form of adoration and communion with 
unseen higher powers. With the people of Jehovah 
it has been foremost from the time of Abraham. 

This patriarch and founder of a religion and a 
race literally wrestled with God in prayer. His 
fervor and importunity and the answers he obtained 
have been the inspiration of all students of the Old 
Testament in every age. When Jesus entered upon 
his earthly work he began at once to pray; not to 
talk about prayer as a good thing, or to urge others 
to engage in it, but to pray — constantly, fervently, 
without ceasing. His example almost makes the 
duty and privilege of prayer an ordinance. It cer- 
tainly drives the Christian to his closet to study the 
whole subject, that he may discover its power and 
how much of prayer there should be in his life. 

If now we ask the direct question, What is 
prayer? we shall get an answer that will doubtless 
surprise many. "Prayer," cries one devout student, 
"is not the ignorant outcry of a clamorous soul 
seeking to have its own way, but the calm, delib- 
erate utterance of intelligent righteousness coming 
into entire sympathy with the mind of God." 

Similarly, Henry Ward Beecher once said: 

I know there is in prayer a great deal more than question 
40 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

or answer. If prayer were but a mere order sent to market, 
expecting to bring back so much in a basket every time, I 
then might enter into account and have commercial dealing 
on that subject. The barrenness of prayer is, I am afraid, 
somewhat exposed by the low state in which it too often 
exists. 

Dropping out, as we may say, the lower elements of it, 
what is prayer but the conscious lifting of a man's soul into 
the invisible realm, into the presence of the invisible Father? 
What is it but shutting out for the moment, with the closing 
of the eye, all conscious sensuousness and secularity and ris- 
ing by the effort of the soul through silence up into the 
region where God sits, and dwelling — though but for a 
moment — out of the body, in the presence of the eternal God. 

To the author personally the element which has 
seemed vital in all true prayer is that expressed by 
our word contact. Prayer is contact between the 
worshiping soul and God. This contact may be 
long or short, but no soul can come into actual touch 
with God and not be better ever afterwards. 

Many of the great prayers of the Bible contain 
no petitions for personal blessings. They are 
mighty paeans of thanksgiving, glorious anthems of 
praise. Note the victorious shout of Moses and of 
Deborah. Others ask for no material blessings, but 
pray for cleansing and refilling with divine power. 
Many students feel that the Fifty-first Psalm is the 
greatest prayer in the Old Testament. Here David 
is on his face before God : 

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving- 
kindness : 

41 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out 

my transgressions. 
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, 
And cleanse me from my sin. 
For I know my transgressions; 
And my sin is ever before me. . . . 
Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean : 
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 
Make me to hear joy and gladness, 
That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. 
Hide thy face from my sins, 
And blot out all mine iniquities. 
Create in me a clean heart, God; 
And renew a right spirit within me. 
Cast me not away from thy presence; 
And take not thy holy Spirit from me. 
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; 
And uphold me with a willing spirit. 
Then will I teach trangressors thy ways ; 
And sinners shall be converted unto thee. 

A hasty analysis of our Lord's prayer reveals 
that, while there are many petitions, only one has 
any bearing upon material blessings : 

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in 
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us 
our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into 
temptation, but deliver us from evil : For thine is the king- 
dom, and the pow T er, and the glory, forever. Amen. 

The first sentence declares God's universal 
fatherhood and the place of his abode. Then fol- 
low three fervent petitions that his name may be 

42 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

glorified, the coming of his kingdom hastened and 
that his will may prevail, "as in heaven, so on 
earth." Next is the single petition for material 
blessings : "Give us this day our daily bread." 
Probably that was to include all like things — home, 
shelter, health, food. Three terse petitions for 
spiritual blessings follow: "Forgive us our debts, 
lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil"; 
things only God can do for us. Then follows the 
conclusion, which declares that all glory, praise 
and honor shall be given to his name forever. 

What does this brief analysis reveal? Clearly 
that when we pray we are not to spend all our time 
and strength asking God for material blessings. 
The proportions of this model prayer teach us that 
for every single petition we put up to God for 
material things there should be at least three that 
more glory shall be given unto his name and three 
that our sins may be forgiven and that we may 
escape the subtle snare of the Devil. 

By reasonable activity we can provide food, 
clothing and shelter. Let us take more time in our 
prayers to thank God for the opportunity to secure 
them, which is a gift from him. Let us ask him 
for the things we cannot provide ourselves : forgive- 
ness of sins, spiritual insight, vision-power, escape 
from the enemies of our soul life. These things 
are really worth praying for. We are to pray much 
and ask for many things, but our chief concern 
should be that God's name shall be glorified, his 

43 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

kingdom spread and ourselves delivered from all 
kinds of evil. 

But even this lofty conception of prayer is not 
the highest. A still higher position is to look upon 
it as simply communion between the worshiping 
soul and God. Protesting against all formalism, 
Beecher said : 

I remember that it was a long time before I could get back 
to the habit of my childhood and kneel down and pray with 
any comfort. The moment I bent my knee I also lost my 
thread; and the mechanicalism of attempting to pray morn- 
ing, noon and night would ruin my soul, I think. If I had to 
pray by the clock, if I had to have a mechanical order, it 
would derange all my spiritual tendencies. I could not do it. 
Little by little I came to the feeling of wanting to commune 
with my Father. 

"To me," said the great preacher, "prayer is not 
stairs by which you always start at the same place 
and reach the same place . . . but to my 
thought prayer is wings by which a man may go 
just where his own will wants to go. 
You never fulfill the apostle's injunctions, 'Pray 
always,' 'Be instant in prayer,' 'Pray in season and 
out of season,' — those things cannot be done, if 
prayer is a set act instead of an evolution of feeling 
or a holy ejaculation." 

In its very highest sense, then, prayer is com- 
munion with God. It may be likened to that com- 
panionship which marks ideal unions between man 
and woman. In such companionship the one is not 

44 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

constantly asking the other for something, but 
rather is telling of his love and praising the virtues 
of the loved one; trying to find out the other's will 
that he may do it. 

Petitions are not foreign to such communion 
but they are infrequent and, when the worshiper is 
praying to God, they usually urge only that his 
will may be done. Fortunate indeed are they whose 
absolute confidence in God makes it possible for 
them to pray with the ancients : 

Great God, grant us, we beseech thee, those things we stand 
in need of, whether we ask them or not, and withhold those 
things which would be hurtful to us even though we crave 
them of thee. 

This is to reach the heights of our Saviour in 
Gethsemane : 

If it be possible, let this cup pass from me : nevertheless, not 
as I will, but as thou wilt. 

Happy indeed the Christian who is not afraid 
to tell God that he wants what God knows will be 
best for him even though it means the giving up 
of some things to which he is clinging most tena-» 
ciously. 

With keen discrimination S. D. Gordon says that, 
while the term prayer is commonly used for all 
intercourse with God, it should be kept in mind 
that the word covers and includes three forms of 
intercourse: communion, petition, intercession. 

45 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Communion is fellowship with God. Not request for some 
particular thing; not asking, but simply enjoying himself, 
loving him, thinking about him, how beautiful and intelligent 
and strong and loving and lovable he is; talking to him 
without words. That is the truest worship, thinking how 
worthy he is of all the best we can possibly bring to him, and 
infinitely more. It has to do wholly with God and a man 
being on good terms with each other. Of necessity it includes 
confession on my part and forgiveness upon God's part, for 
only so can we come into the relation of fellowship. Adora- 
tion, worship, belong to this first phase of prayer. Communion 
is the basis of all prayer. 

Petition is definite request of God for something I need. 
A man's whole life is utterly dependent upon the giving hand 
of God. Everything we need comes from him. Our friend- 
ships, ability to make money, health, strength in temptation 
and in sorrow, guidance in difficult circumstances and in all 
of life's movements ; help of all sorts, financial, bodily, mental, 
spiritual — all come from God and necessitate a constant touch 
with him. 

True prayer never stops with petition for oneself. It 
reaches out for others. The very word intercession implies 
a reaching out for some one else. It is standing as a go- 
between, a mutual friend between God and some one who 
is either out of touch with him or is needing special help. 
Intercession is the climax of prayer. It is the outward drive 
of prayer. It is the effective end of prayer outward. Com- 
munion and petition are upward and downward. Intercession 
rests upon these two as its foundation. Communion and peti- 
tion store the life with the power of God; intercession lets it 
out on behalf of others. The first two are necessarily for 
self; this third is for others. 

There has ever been among men a small per cent 
who scoff at the idea that the requests of a weak 
human being upon this small earth will influence the 

4 6 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

action of the great God of the universe. Their 
skepticism has kept alive a question that is still 
asked in certain quarters, Does human prayer in- 
fluence God ? t In answering the question I wish to 
quote again from the keen chapters of Mr. Gordon. 

Prayer does not influence God's purpose. It does influence 
his action. Everything that ever has been prayed for, of 
course I mean the right thing, God has already purposed to 
do. But he does nothing without our consent. He has been 
hindered in his purposes by our lack of willingness. When 
we learn his purposes and make them our prayers we are 
giving him the opportunity to act. Our willingness check- 
mates Satan's opposition. It opens the path to God and rids 
it of the obstacles. And so the road is cleared for the free 
action already planned. 

A swift journey through the Old Testament re- 
veals the fact that many blessings came to men in 
response to the prayers of the faithful. Only one 
or two; instances in several classes will be cited: 
Abraham prayed and children were born into the 
household of Abimelech. Gen. 20: 17. In re- 
sponse to the prayer of Moses God quenched the 
fire that burned the children of Israel at Taberah. 
Num. 11: 2. And again, in response to similar 
prayer, he provided escape from the bites of the 
fiery serpents in the land of Edom. Num. 21:7. 
Hannah prayed and God gave her the motherhood 
of Samuel, the wise judge of Israel. I Sam. 1 : 15. 
The earnest prayer of Hezekiah added fifteen years 
to his useful life. Isa. 38: 3. James, the apostle, 

47 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

supporting his contention that the effectual fervent 
prayer of a righteous man availeth much, says : 

Elias was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed 
fervently that it might not rain; and it rained not on the 
earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again; 
and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her 
fruit. James 5 : 17, 18. 

Surely, with our present intelligence, we will not 
be offended if answers to our prayers involve a sus- 
pension or even an alteration of what appear to us 
to be "the laws of nature." We know so little about 
those laws that we find we have been led into child- 
ish error about them every day. Only a . few years 
ago we said with vehemence that it would be against 
the laws of nature for the sound of the human voice 
to reach from New York to Chicago, but now it is 
done over the telephone a thousand times every day ; 
we used to say that no man could see through solid 
flesh or an inch of wood or other opaque substance, 
but now the X-ray is unchecked by them; we said 
only a few months ago that it was against the law 
of nature for man to fly through the air, but recently 
we have witnessed a fight from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. If what we call the laws of nature are a 
part of the purpose of the great God then it is no 
violation for him to manipulate them as he wills for 
the welfare of cooperating children. 

But God is not limited in his working to material 
things. He has quite as complete sway over minds 

48 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

and hearts. It is on record that the prayers of an 
aroused wife in the State of Iowa issued in the con- 
version of her unbelieving husband in Washington 
who was at the time a member of Congress and 
engrossed in getting through several special meas- 
ures; also that a friend in Missouri began to pray 
for the conversion of a skeptical professor in one 
of the great universities of Europe, and that, after 
the prayer had been answered, a comparison of 
experiences between the friends revealed the fact 
that the very day the American friend began to 
pray the European friend began to think more fa- 
vorably of God and the Christian life. No intelligent 
man will say that all of these things, and countless 
others that might be cited, are coincidences. They 
are too unusual, too striking, too clear. There is 
but one reasonable conclusion : God does hear and 
God does answer the fervent prayer of his right- 
eous children. Prayer is the most powerful force 
the Christian possesses. 

Old though it be, this well-known word of Lord 
Tennyson, in his Idylls of the King, is too fine to 
be omitted from the study we are making here : 

More things are wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 

Rise like a fountain for me night and day; 

For what are men better than sheep or goats, 

That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, 

Both for themselves and those who call them friends? 

49 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

For so the whole round world is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 

There is simply no limit to the power of prayer. 
All depends on the faith and importunity of him 
who prays. If he convinces God of the sincerity of 
his desires and his willingness to cooperate in mak- 
ing their answer possible all the power of God is 
on his side and this power no earthly forces can 
withstand. 

For the purposes of this study it surely is not 
irreverent for us to ask, What is the value of prayer 
to the individual? Are there reflex benefits of 
which the Christian has the right to take account? 
Has prayer a value in Christian culture ? To these 
questions there can be but one answer and that an- 
swer is strongly affirmative. If there were no direct 
answers prayer should be the daily practice of the 
Christian for its reflex benefits. 

Earnest prayer always enriches the life of the 
worshiper. Prayerless lives are generally crude 
and sensuous. The lifting up of the thoughts to 
God, the very coming into his pure presence, re- 
bukes man's sins and leads him to pray much for 
forgiveness. Communing much with God prevents 
elaborating personal desires. God becomes more 
and more our ideal and we long to be like him in 
knowledge, righteousness and true holiness. Ameri- 
can Church history is full of instances wherein 
men and women, denied the privilege of education 

5o 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

and association with cultural forces, have grown 
fine in mind and heart by much communion with 
God. 

Beecher tells of a colored woman in the South 
whose power in prayer was one of the wonders of 
her day. In ordinary conversation she broke every 
rule of grammar and used the most commonplace 
words ; when aroused in prayer she seemed to share 
the gift of Pentecost. Her very language was 
changed. As her spirit rose she lifted the whole 
audience with her. She fell into the majestic lan- 
guage of the Old Testament and so swayed men's 
hearts as to lead them to say as Jacob said at Bethel, 
"Surely Jehovah is in this place." If as Dr. David 
Gregg says, "A grand, bold life will produce grand, 
bold prayers," we are led to say, "Grand praying 
will produce grand living; the Christian who com- 
munes much with God will rapidly become god- 
like." 

But this is not all. There is nothing which so 
widens a man's life and gives him world visions 
as does prayer. No man who prays in earnest that 
God will bring his kingdom to fullness on the earth 
can stay within the limits of his own city or even 
his own country. Prayer leaps all boundary lines 
whether of nation or race. The praying man soon 
ascends the highest mountains and, looking out 
over the whole world, prays for it all and throws 
himself into winning it. 

For the growing Christian daily prayer is a neces- 
5i 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

sity. It is, in a sense, the food of the soul, and the 
prayerless soul soon starves. If Christianity has 
failed to beautify your life, if you have not grown 
richer in character and stronger in faith, question 
yourself concerning your prayers: have they been 
what they ought to be ? have they had a large place 
every day? Jesus tells us to pray much. To ask 
in his name for the things we desire at God's hands, 
and to this command he has added this glorious 
promise : "If ye abide in me, and my words abide 
in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be 
done unto you." 

We join the company of earth's great lives when 
we begin to pray; not only the great in religious 
realms like Abraham and David and Jesus and Paul, 
but the great in material realms as well. Washing- 
ton wrestled with God at Valley Forge as Franklin 
had at the calling of the Constitutional Convention. 
Lincoln prayed for guidance and victory during the 
awful days of the Civil War, and McKinley prayed 
likewise during the war with Spain. Morse, the in- 
ventor of the telegraph, never began a great work 
without praying for divine guidance and never 
achieved victory without giving all praise and honor 
to God. The mercantile world recently united in 
honoring John Wanamaker for his half century in 
successful business, but his religious devotion is as 
prominent as his business success. 

Do not make the unpardonable mistake of think- 
ing that you are too learned or too prosperous or 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN' CULTURE 

too brilliant to pray. The greater truly great men 
become the more are they able to understand the 
greatness of God and their own need for guidance. 
The greater they become the more able they are to 
see what really great things God stands ready to 
do as soon as man is willing to cooperate by re- 
moving obstacles, and they begin to pray that this 
may be done, that man may be filled with heavenly 
wisdom and moved to labor for the welfare of the 
whole race. 

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, 

Uttered or unexpressed; 
The motion of a hidden fire 

That trembles in the breast. 

Prayer is the burden of a sigh, 

The falling of a tear, 
The upward glancing of an eye 

When none but God is near. 

Prayer is the simplest form of speech 

That infant lips can try; 
Prayer the sublimest strains that reach 

The Majesty on high. 

Prayer is the contrite sinner's voice 

Returning from his ways, 
While angels in their songs rejoice, 

And cry, "Behold, he prays." 

Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, 

The Christian's native air, 
His watchword at the gates of death; 

He enters heaven with prayer. 

53 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

O thou, by whom we come to God, 

The Life, the Truth, the Way, 
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod; 

Lord, teach us how to pray. 

— James Montgomery. 



54 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Four 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY SACRIFICE 

On the very threshold of Christianity the aspiring 
heart comes face to face with a necessity as hard 
and unyielding as it is at first unwelcome. He is 
anxious to enter the heavenly community but he 
draws back from entering it through a fiery fur- 
nace as a gateway. There, over the archway to this 
twofold paradise, stands the inexorable edict, 
"Terms of Entrance — A Living Sacrifice." "But," 
cries the haughty soul, "I will not sacrifice." "That 
is yours to choose," replies the angel that keeps the 
gate, "but without sacrifice you cannot enter, and 
without entrance you can have none of the blessings 
enjoyed by those who dwell herein." 

Christ has never yet deceived a soul that knocked 
for entrance at the door of his kingdom. Instead of 
covering up its austerities and trying to make it all 
seem like a garden of roses he almost ruthlessly, it 
would seem, tears away the covering and lets all 
the hard facts stand forth. "If any man would come 
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
cross, and follow me." How strangely similar 

55 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

sounded the voice of the Italian general, Garibaldi, 
eighteen hundred years later, when, leading his sol- 
diers to a forlorn hope, he cried, "I have noth- 
ing to offer you but hardships : hunger, cold, the 
drenching storm, disease, the dangers of battle, 
death." And yet just as those heroic patriots braved 
all for their love of Italy so do men everywhere 
count it a privilege to sacrifice for Jesus Christ. 
How evident it is that notwithstanding this law that 
stands as an unyielding frame through which every 
candidate must enter Christianity is rapidly over- 
spreading the earth, while the religions that do not 
require it have no virility and are gradually pining 
away. On its face the fact seems unexplainable 
and every enquiring mind is eager to discover the 
secret. 

Seeking the origin of the law of sacrifice one 
must go back of Christ, the most perfect example, 
for sacrifice was the chief element in the Jewish 
ritual ; he must go back of the tabernacle, for some- 
thing moved Abraham, the father of all the faithful, 
to offer up his only son to God ; he must go back of 
Abraham, for the first sons of Adam brought their 
sacrifices to Jehovah. Can it be, then, that the law 
of sacrifice is not arbitrarily imposed by Christ upon 
his followers — that it is one of the laws of the 
universe, like adhesion and gravitation? All the 
scientific investigations of the day proclaim this to 
be a fact. No life exists that has not been preceded 
by other life that made sacrifices to bring it into 

56 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

existence. The first cell of a living thing grows by 
taking sustenance until the center is too far removed 
from the walls to gain the food it needs. Only two 
courses open before it: The cell must either die 
or sacrifice its individual life that two smaller cells 
may live. To these in turn the unyielding alterna- 
tive is presented, and the process goes on in infinite 
series until all the organisms of the universe come 
into being. 

There is only one farther step in this investigation 
which man can take, but it is the step which instantly 
clears the mystery and makes us fly to sacrifice as to 
a precious privilege : Back of Christ, back oi the 
temple, back of Abraham, back of the sons of Adam, 
God sacrificed before the foundations of the earth 
were laid ; and — because man is in the image of God, 
in all the higher elements of his nature, and in 
proportion as godly qualities are allowed to act 
within him — he also sacrifices, that God's kingdom 
may come and his will be done, as in heaven, so on 
earth. 

O subtle evidence of the spirit of God in man! 
O exalted appeal to the highest instincts in man's 
soul ! What man is willing to be selfish when being 
so is an open indication of how far he is from God ! 
When being so proclaims him an ingrate in face of 
God's infinite sacrifice for him! When being so is 
to shut in his own face the doors that open an 
exalted and noble life here upon earth! How fully 
Carlyle caught the secret of this exalted mystery : 

57 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

It is only with renunciations that life, properly speaking, 
can be said to begin. In a valiant suffering for others, not 
in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness 
ever lie. 

Whyte Melville says : 

"You talk of self as the motive to exertion. I tell you that 
it is abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is 
noble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is 
ornamental in the world." 

Dr. Hillis says: 

"Speaking not as an amateur but as a master, Christ 
affirms that he who would save his life must lose it; 
that he who would be remembered by others must forget 
himself; that the soldier who flees from danger to save 
his body shall leave that life upon the battle field, while he 
who plunges his banner into the very thick of the fight and 
is carried off the field on his shield shall in safety bear his 
life away. Hard seem the terms ; they rebuke ease ; they 
smite self-indulgence; they deny the maxims of the worldly 
wise. But in accepting Christ's principle and forsaking their 
palaces that they might be as brothers to beggars, Xavier and 
Loyola found an exhilaration denied to kings; while each 
Sir Launfal, in his ease denied the Holy Grail, has in the 
hour of self-sacrifice discerned the Vision Splendid. To 
each young patriot and soldier, looking eagerly unto the 
tablets that commemorate the deeds of heroes, to each young 
scholar aspiring to a place beside the sages, comes the word : 
'Life is through death, and immortal renown through self- 
renunciation.' " 

To what extreme limits did our Saviour go in 
accepting the necessity of sacrifice! nay, how abso- 

58 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

lutely did he rob necessity of its chains and by the 
alchemy of love change its very nature into wel- 
comed privilege ! Not even where it cost him most 
did he put his children forth to an experience he 
himself had not tasted. "Come," cried the world, 
"and we will give you crown and scepter ! You have 
the presence, you have the powers; we have the 
allegiance wherewith to make you king of Israel." 
Was ever such flattery and temptation brought to 
bear upon a man who did not yield ? What visions 
of luxury and power! No more coarse food, no 
more nights without a pillow, no more rags, no more 
abuse from the idle rich, but in their stead splendor, 
adoration, a scepter whose slightest movement is 
obeyed, while the glory of Israel is gradually re- 
stored. Why not? Would this not accomplish his 
purpose just as rapidly and as well ? Oh, no ! Here 
is a Master who insists upon tasting the experiences 
of his humblest servant. Shall he who knows so 
well the weakening influences of luxury, the 
strengthening cordial of sacrifice, take the luxury 
and fail, while he may take the sacrifice and gain 
immortal mastery? "Get thee behind me, Satan." 
"Man shall not live by bread alone." And then 
steadily, step by step, he trod the path of sacrifice 
until it ended on Calvary and Christ tasted death 
for every man. 

When you ask what it is that draws all men to- 
ward Christ the answer is not far away. We ad- 
mire his manhood, we revel in his ability to be 

59 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

natural, we cannot turn away from his exercise of 
love and mercy, but we see in a moment that none 
of these could be were it not for a more glorious 
virtue that is the mother of them all — his sacrifice 
of all things for those he loved. And let it be said 
plainly wherever this story is told, whether men 
ever acknowledge Christ or not, whether they ever 
take advantage of his service or not: Christ has 
sacrificed enough for every man to open for him the 
way to heaven on its godward side. It only remains 
for man to take down the bars on his own side. 

So dark and bloody is the page of religious his- 
tory in Spain that we grasp at every ray of light 
as the drowning man grasps a straw. The idea that 
dominated Spanish Catholicism in the middle ages 
was penance rather than repentance. Penance would 
save the soul though surrounding it with gloom, 
bodily torture, isolation, withdrawal from the 
world's helpful activities. Forbidding as were the 
conditions many souls, weary of life or weighted 
down by a sense of sin, withdrew from the world, 
entered the convent and gave themselves up to holy 
meditation. 

In the midst of this gloomy atmosphere a young 
girl, Theresa, determined to become a nun. She 
was young, beautiful, fond of society, even giddy 
and worldly; but seized with fear of eternal pun- 
ishment she determined to renounce the world and 
strive by endless penance to regain the favor of 
God. It was a long and weary struggle. Weak- 

60 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

ness and disease added to her torture, yet so servile 
was her fear that she would not quit the convent 
and venture again upon the life of the world. Her 
sins were never mortal — they were chiefly those of 
a wayward nature wishing for experiences out of 
harmony with the elevated life she craved — yet so 
sensitve was her conscience that these childish sins 
gave her more misery than theft or even murder 
would more callous souls. Twenty years passed 
by, — twenty years of self-renunciation and sacri- 
fice, — when suddenly the whole aspect of her life 
changed. The "Confessions of St. Augustine" fall- 
ing into her hands she eagerly read of his conver- 
sion, and for the first time the idea that God loves 
a child while that child is still in rebellion flashed 
upon her soul. Then God loved her now — had been 
loving her during all these years of sacrifice made 
to gain, not his love, but barely his forgiveness! 
The idea transformed her, softened her nature, 
sweetened her life and multiplied her natural power 
of song. In ecstasy she sang: 

Absent from thee, my Saviour dear! 

I call not life this living here, 

Oh, Lord, my light and living breath! 

Take me, oh, take me from this death! 

And burst the bars that sever me 

From my true life above ! 

Think how I die thy face to see, 

And cannot live away from thee. 



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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Henceforth she was bathed in the glory of her 
Lord and her face shone with the radiance of 
heaven. She was beloved by everybody, venerated 
for her virtues as well as for her spiritual elevation. 
Her intellectual gifts became as remarkable as her 
piety, her conversation was charming and she drew 
the greatest people of the age around her. She never 
claimed perfection, but the age in which she lived 
loved and venerated her only second to the Holy 
Virgin. 1 

Twenty years of self-renunciation to gain a char- 
acter that charmed and elevated the world and won 
the signal favor of God! If the price seems large, 
consider the glorious possession ; an immortal name 
on earth; a fadeless crown in heaven; the eternal 
favor of the Prince of Peace. 

Sacrifice brings out and increases the beauty of 
character as cutting and polishing reveals the glories 
of precious stones. A diamond worth between two 
and three millions of dollars was recently found in 
South Africa, but in its present form it is un- 
salable. To give it commercial value it must be 
mercilessly cut, though each division reduces its 
total value thousands of dollars. The more it sub- 
mits to the lapidary's chafing the greater will be its 
utility and glory when it finds its way into the marts 
of trade. There are many diamonds among men 
and women of our state. They have a worthy an- 

1 Condensed from the lectures of John Lord. 
62 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

cestry, noble bodies, minds capable of marvelous 
achievements, but at present they are of little value 
to society because of crudeness or of some glaring 
defect. 

Perhaps the defect is pride — not the noble pride 
in the fact of divine relationship and self-consecra- 
tion to the needs of men, but that petty, shameless 
pride in place or birth or present possession, that of 
all things makes one ashamed of the race to which he 
belongs. How one feels like crying out to such 
with Wordsworth : 

Know that pride, 
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, 
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt 
For any living thing, hath faculties 
Which he has never used; that thought with him 
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye 
Is ever on himself doth look on one, 
The least of nature's works, one who might move 
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 
Unlawful ever. Oh, be wiser, thou, 
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love; 
True dignity abides with him alone 
"Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
Can still suspect, and still revere himself, 
In lowliness of thought. 

Or mayhap the present defect is selfishness that 
makes the possessor one of those spongelike charac- 
ters that suck in every adjacent thing but give noth- 
ing forth until they are squeezed; heavy, soggy, 
borne along by the servants of men as a bowlder is 

6 3 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

borne on the surface of a glacier, doing none of 
the work, only adding to the burden of the toiling 
masses. How they do need to be shamed out of 
their sin! Selfishness always leads to self-indul- 
gence, and that which might be both beautiful and 
useful is instead hideous and valueless. 

Some of us ought to pray to- God for chastening 
instead of more caressing. He has blessed us and 
blessed us and blessed us, and we have become more 
and more self -centered and hateful, until nothing 
but deep experiences will correct our errors. Per- 
haps Holland was right when he sang : 

Hearts like apples are hard and sour 
Till crushed by time's resistless power 
And yield their juices rich and bland 
To none but sorrow's heavy hand. 

Let us not draw back from the sterner experiences 
of life. They often contain the very grains of gold 
we crave. As we advance from youth all is light- 
ness and gayety. We would not have it otherwise, 
for the instincts drawing us toward it are God- 
planted, but as we go from youth to middle age a 
change creeps over us which, even if we do not see 
it, is nevertheless very evident to our friends. Some 
go on until their gayety becomes frivolity and life 
for them is either a round of pleasure or an insuf- 
ferable bore. Others through disappointment be- 
come crabbed and morose. Life to them has be- 

6 4 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

come a treadmill and men are disposed to let them 
tread alone. 

But there are others who, spoiled neither by much 
joy or by bitter disappointment, are wont to fulfill 
their duties honorably from day to day, the un- 
pleasant as well as the pleasant ones. They bear 
sorrows and share joys as the days may bring them. 
These are they toward whom we are drawn irre- 
sistibly. It requires no skilled lapidary to discover 
beauty in a rich character. Cover it as he will the 
glory shines forth, as did the glory of the Lord on 
the Mount of Transfiguration. Watch the beauty 
creep into the life of that devout woman to whom 
falls the care of an aged invalid. She has had trials 
enough before, say some — but perhaps they do not 
know. God may have larger things in store for her 
as her life becomes richer. Oh, the endlessness of 
those arduous duties. Now the patient is petulant 
and exacting, now ungrateful, now complaining, 
then sweet again and yielding as an infant. But the 
life at that bedside! Why does she stay? There are 
pleasanter places and more welcome duties, and 
surely she is entitled to them. She stays because 
she is a bit of God incarnate. She has caught the 
Master's spirit; and though many would take her 
and make her a queen, she prefers to renounce it all 
and be a servant. The love in her heart is show- 
ing more and more in her face, for we can no more 
conceal good qualities than we can bad ones. 

Said an aged mother, during the last days of her 
65 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

life, to a faithful friend who had cared for her for 
twenty years as a mother cares for a baby, "I will 
tell mother how good you have been to me the mo- 
ment I meet her in heaven." It would be worth 
some sacrifice, do you not think, to have your good 
works spoken of in heaven? "Inasmuch as ye did 
it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye 
did it unto me." 

But there is one other phase of this whole sub- 
ject upon which I wish to touch. Originally sacri- 
fice involved the death of the victim. It was so in 
Israel. Christ so practiced it. In all cases it is sup- 
posed to mean the giving up of much. 

Does it not seem, in face of what we have just 
seen, that what Christ asks us to give up to become 
Christians hardly deserves the name of sacrifice? 
Is it not more like saying to man : "Throw away 
the dirt that is in your pocket and I will fill it with 
gold" ? He asks us to give up unbelief ; all unclean- 
ness, all evil speaking and thinking ; to give up those 
practices only that injure us. In place of these he 
binds himself to give us a home in heaven, peace on 
earth, increasing worth in character and life. 

When the wild orange was brought from the 
woods into richly cultivated gardens it chafed under 
the limitations existing there. It had little room to 
spread itself, the space given to its roots was so 
small, but — worse than this — the gardener ruthlessly 
cut away its branches ; under the sharp pruning 
knife it was forced to give up half its leaves ; it was 

66 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

also forced to furnish sap to alien sprouts grafted 
into its lacerated sides. The sacrifice seemed un- 
bearable. But hardly had the second season passed 
until that chafing shrub began to notice the richer 
fragrance of its own blossoms and fruit. Sacrifice 
for one season had transformed its life and turned 
barrenness into fertility, a useless thing into a 
treasure. Why can we not look upon the sacrifices 
required of us as blessings in disguise, and allow 
their enriching influences to have their perfect 
work? 

Is it not after all a question of recognizing God's 
superior wisdom and love and the desirability of the 
best gifts? With what poor possessions most of us 
are willing to be satisfied! A mind half cultivated 
and poorly stored ; a heart all selfish and unsympa- 
thetic; a soul groping in the dimness of limited 
spiritual vision, while all around us stand noble 
virtues knocking for admission into our lives 
through the gateway of sacrifice ! 

If the student must sacrifice much to gain the 
knowledge he craves; if the artist must sacrifice to 
add nimbleness to fingers and steadiness to his 
nerves ; if the statesman must sacrifice to gain power 
and influence that he may shape the policies of na- 
tions, why should we complain if to secure the best 
gifts in God's kingdom we are asked to give up 
some of the things to which we have been clinging, 
things which, if we hold on to them, are sure to 
bring us injury? 

6 7 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

The church of Jesus is suffering to-day because 
the law of sacrifice is being disregarded by so many 
of her children. How few are willing to sacrifice 
a personal comfort that the treasury of the Lord's 
house may be less barren. "A tithe is mine," saith 
the Lord, and the man who withholds it is guilty 
of robbing God. How pathetic the picture of the 
rich young ruler who, seeking larger life, was told 
that to gain it he must put away his vast posses- 
sions, take up his cross and follow the Saviour. He 
went away sorrowing, and we can only conjecture 
what came after ; but we can see in mental vision the 
lines hardening around the mouth, his nature becom- 
ing more grasping, his disposition more miserly un- 
til the once promising youth has become a selfish 
and brutal old man, interested only in the things 
which perish with the using. He kept his money, 
but he lost the image of his God. 

How few are willing to sacrifice personal com- 
fort that the Lord's house may have workers in 
every field! Has an hour's lounging become more 
to us than the nurture of childish lif.e or the joy of 
a lonely heart made glad by our presence and 
interest? Well, we may stay at home and lounge 
about all day if we will, but if the kingdom of 
God loses a little, we lose infinitely more. Surely 
there is nothing more pathetic than a barren human 
soul. An unlighted lamp-post is a paradise beside it. 

Even Jonah on his way to Tarshish must pay the 
fare. The palaces of the New Jerusalem may 

68 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

tower above us invitingly and seem only a step 
away, but no man may enter in without self-sacri- 
fice. The rich characters of the world charm us 
and in our aspiring hours we cry out to them, "Re- 
veal to us your secret." Then do they whisper: 
"If we are worthy, it is because we have kept our 
bodies under, because we have given free reign to 
our souls, because we have sacrificed the present 
comfort for the future glory, because we have per- 
formed the unpleasant as well as the pleasant duties 
of our lives with equal readiness and fidelity. "We 
simply let the godlike impulses in us act." 

Shall we not change the wording of our prayers 
just a little? Let us not pray only and all the time 
that God shall bless us, but that he will give us the 
courage to sacrifice for him. Shall we not with 
Phillips Brooks cease to pray for duties equal to 
our powers and begin to pray for powers equal to 
our duties? Shall we not cease asking for easy 
lives and ask rather for natures ready to meet what- 
ever God in his providence shall send, allowing each 
experience to have in us its perfect work ? Shall we 
not ask God to teach us the full meaning of that 
mighty word of Jesus : "He that findeth his life 
shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake 
shall find it"? 



69 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Five 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY SERVICE 

There are, in each human life, two spheres that 
may be distinctly bounded and defined. They bear 
a vital relationship, the second really growing out of 
the first, and yet they no more mingle than the soil 
mingles with the plant; .they are no more one than 
the rose and the earth out of which the fragrant 
flower so luxuriantly grows. I speak of the spheres 
called thought and action. Thought is internal and 
wholly personal. Action, though growing out of 
thought, is external and usually bears upon other 
lives. 

The sphere of man's thought is glorious to con- 
template. It is as large as his knowledge and experi- 
ence and its eye has the ease and swiftness of move- 
ment of the electric spark. In the sphere of thought 
every educated man is a millionaire; the four quar- 
ters of the earth are his, the sea and sky and all that 
is in them. He delves into the mines and caves 
of the earth and weighs and measures suns and 
worlds he may never touch ; from Etna to Vesuvius 
is but a span which the mind clears in a hundredth 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

part the time it takes the halting tongue to give it 
utterance. All known truth, too, is his, and the 
mind plays with those mighty forces called Morality, 
Duty, Faith, Obedience, as the child plays with dolls 
and blocks and is by them no more dismayed. 

After contemplating this majestic sphere of 
thought which, in each man's life, is bounded only 
by his largest learning and experience, how pathetic 
it is, in the vast majority of cases, to view the 
sphere of his action. Many a man who in thought 
is a millionaire girdling the earth with swift and 
certain stride, in action is a poor pauper tilling only 
his acre and his barnyard ! One is led to think it 
was to this last class that James addressed his well- 
known injunction, "Be ye doers of the word, and 
not hearers only." For in his day men were hear- 
ing and giving mental assent to the loftiest princi- 
ples and sentiments, but no evidence of them ap- 
peared in their daily actions ; the ponderous and ma- 
jestic history of Moses; the exalted life philosophy 
of Job and of Solomon; the inspiring spiritual songs 
of David and the sons of Asaph ; they heard them 
all and pronounced them excellent and then went 
forth to break every command and disregard every 
injunction. 

One fears that the men and women of America 
are guilty of the same sins. In no nation do men 
hear more truth or more freely confess that it ought 
to be observed; in no nation is this same truth so 
universally disregarded. In his own heart every 

7i 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

man confesses that man ought to observe the Sab- 
bath day; that he ought to live a pure and unspotted 
life; that he ought to be sympathetic and generous 
and "do unto others as he would have others do unto 
him," but alas! he soon turns from the mirror and 
forgets what manner of man he is ! To all such 
James cries : "Be ye doers of the word, and not 
hearers only." 

Consider for a moment what this Word is you are 
called upon to observe. It is not a bundle of nursery 
rimes nor an opinion from a judge's bench; it is 
not the effusion of a modern daily newspaper; not 
even the minutes of a session of Congress. It is a 
Word that transcends all other utterances as the 
gold transcends the rock in which it is embedded; 
it is the all-embracing, unchanging, life-giving 
Word of Almighty God, Creator and Governor of 
the universe. 

The wise man will give this Word the place in 
his life to which it is entitled ! It is not enough that 
we receive it and give mental assent to its com- 
mands ; it is not enough to recognize and rave over 
the beauty of its diction or the loftiness of its 
philosophy; it is not even enough to confess that it 
is the Word of God; it is our duty, it should be our 
highest privilege, to obey this Word, to study its 
bearing upon human life, to apply its lofty life 
philosophy to our every action. 

James makes very clear what we are easily per- 
suaded to believe, that man is the very pinnacle of 

72 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

God's creation, "Of his own will he brought us 
forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind 
of first-fruits of his creatures." 1 How ready we are 
to believe this and to assume command in accordance 
with it ! On the physical side, ever since the Crea- 
tion pictured in Genesis, man has considered him- 
self lord of creation and has acted accordingly, and 
yet, so far short do we fall of what we might be, 
morally and spiritually, of what God intended we 
should be, that our failure fairly stuns the thought- 
ful mind and fills it with shame and with confusion. 

Unable to make man what he desired him to be 
by precept, God added to his glorious precept a more 
glorious example. The thinking mind does not 
doubt for a moment that Jesus of Nazareth was 
God's idea of what a man should be. Perfect in his 
faith, pure in his life, boundless in his sympathies, 
constant in his devotion to the welfare of society 
and the uplift of mankind. No man can study 
intently the character of Jesus without a fuller com- 
prehension of what God's message to his life 
should be. 

The amazing thing about man is that, entering 
the sphere of thought as far as Jesus did, his 
entrance into the sphere of action, as compared with 
Jesus, should be so poor and beggarly. It is cer- 
tainly no irreverence to say that man understands 
the value of sympathy as fully as Jesus did and yet 
how little he exercises it! that he comprehends the 

Raines i : 18. 

73 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

possibility and desirability of human virtue as fully 
as Jesus did and yet how crude and imperfect he 
allows his life to be! It is not a fault of under- 
standing; it is a fault of execution. 

Shall we not enlarge our sphere of action until it 
shall, in fuller measure, harmonize with our sphere 
of thought? The question of Christian living in 
this day is not whether we believe this disputed doc- 
trine or that, but, are we living up to the full measure 
of what we do most surely know and do most freely 
confess ? not whether we believe this little point or 
that in the meager report we have of Christ's life on 
earth but, rather, are we confessing the great funda- 
mental fact of his existence and his lofty mission, 
and are we doing our best to continue in his word 
and finish his work. 

I know of no man in America whose sphere of 
action harmonized more perfectly with his sphere 
of thought than did that of Phillips Brooks. Over 
and over and over again he said to the vast com- 
pany that hung upon his words : 

Be the noblest men your present faith, poor and weak and 
imperfect as it is, can make you to be. Live up to your present 
growth, your present faith. So and so only, as you take the 
next straight step forward, as you stand strong where you 
are now, so only can you think the curtain will draw back 
and there will be revealed to you what lies beyond. And 
then live in your positives and not in your negatives. 

In the working out of this positive life, in striving 
to do the things we hear and know to be true, two 

74 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

forms of activity will be very prominent : first, we 
will do all we can with our own hands and brain to 
help those in need, we will try to be Christlike in 
kindly service; and second, we will give all we can 
of substance and material strength that our arm may 
be lengthened to do a larger work. 

The teachings of James have been charmingly 
put in verse by Edmund Vance Cooke: 

So he died for his faith. That is fine. 

More than most of us do. 
But stay. Can you add to that line 

That he lived for it, too? 

It is easy to die. Men have died 

For a wish or a whim — 
From bravado or passion or pride. 

Was it hard for him? 

But to live : every day to live out 

All the truth that he dreamt, 
While his friends met his conduct with doubt, 

And the world with contempt. 

Was it thus that he plodded ahead, 

Never turning aside? 
Then we'll talk of the life that he led. 

Never mind how he died. 

Originally all service was face to face. The good 
Samaritan tied up the wounds of the broken body 
on the Jericho road. That was his first duty. Only 
after he had done all he could with his own hands 

75 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

did he give of his money that others might render 
similar service when he was far away. 

I have seen a Christian woman go into the home 
of squalor and want and render the noblest service 
known among men. The sick child was taken out of 
the arms of the ignorant and shiftless mother, made 
clean and sweet and comfortable, satisfied with 
wholesome food, and then rocked to the first normal 
sleep it had enjoyed for weeks. I have seen this 
angel of mercy go on then to scrub and garnish the 
unkept house, wash dishes caked with refuse from 
many hasty meals, air the bedding saturated with 
the smoke and the smell of poorly cooked food, let 
God's sunshine do its cleansing and purifying work 
in rooms long shut up like tombs. I have seen such 
pathetic abodes transformed by the sacrificial. touch 
of Christlike women and I have said with joy, 
"These women are doers of the Word, and not 
hearers only." "Angels of mercy'' is the right 
phrase, and, thank God, selfish as the masses are be- 
coming, there are thousands of them throughout 
the Christian church. 

But not every woman can go thus and with her 
own hands minister to the needy ; sometimes her own 
imperious duties prevent and sometimes the case of 
need is too far distant. Must she stand by helpless 
and let the world's need go on unrelieved? By the 
grace of God, no! If she cannot go she can give 
such — and in such quantities — as she has. and some 

-6 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

other women, released by her bounty, can go 
and do. 

Out of this second privilege has grown the whole 
benevolent scheme of Christendom. Generosity in 
giving has made possible the vast propaganda of 
foreign missions, which is not only winning the 
race to Christ but is rapidly transforming crude and 
even barbarous nations. Generous giving has 
planted Bible schools and churches by the thou- 
sands on our distant frontier, whose subtle and 
persistent influence has often transformed a wild 
and godless mining camp into a Christian village 
in a single generation; generous giving in America 
has taken the black man as a slave and developed 
him into a useful, self-respecting citizen ; it has 
founded and maintained academies and colleges in 
which sixty-five per cent of the nation's present 
leaders were educated; it has supplied the "sinews 
of war," enabling reformers to fight intemperance 
and every enemy of the moral welfare of our people. 
No man can picture the backward and unhappy state 
in which our own nation and the nations of Asia 
and Africa would have been to-day had not countless 
Christians been "doers of the word, and not hearers 
only" ; had they not sacrificed many personal com- 
forts that the "other sheep" of our Father's crea- 
tion might hear the Shepherd's voice. 

Twenty-five years ago the Bulu people, on the 
west coast of Africa, w T ere naked, ignorant, repul- 
sive savages. They had no law but might. The 

77 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

men were lazy, quarrelsome and self-indulgent. The 
poor women and girls were bought and sold, like 
cattle, for a few cents each. Polygamy was univer- 
sal. Fathers sold their daughters when mere babies 
to be the wives of any man who could pay a fair 
price. The suffering of these girls endured at the 
hands of their sensuous, brutal owners is indescrib- 
able. 

A year or two ago Dr. A. W. Halsey, of the 
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, visited this 
territory. He found the people with language and 
textbooks. He found them reading the Scriptures 
and following, as best they can understand them, 
the teachings of Jesus. Among the Christians 
polygamy has been banished and a semblance of 
domestic happiness is creeping into their homes. 
Hundreds of boys and girls are gathered into 
schools. Their bodies are clothed, their minds are 
being filled with ennobling thoughts. They are 
building homes and cities and are tilling fields which 
for centuries have lain idle. This transformation 
has come about through the money gifts of the 
Christians of America, chiefly from the Presby- 
terian Church. 

The knowledge that the money you are contribut- 
ing to the cause of home missions is helping hun- 
dreds of churches to maintain services in outlying 
districts which otherwise would be entirely without 
the Word of God; that thousands of children are 
enabled, by similarly generous Christians, to study 

78 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

systematically the Word of God; that scores of 
new churches are organized every year; that the 
remnants of our fast disappearing Indian tribes are 
being taught all the elements of Christian truth and 
Christian civilization by your generosity; that the 
immigrant, landing upon our shores, is met by 
friendly hands and introduced to the best life by 
Christian workers ; that you are helping to bring the 
laboring world and the church into closer relation- 
ship; that your contributions are making possible 
the preparation of scientific surveys in city and 
country which shall be the basis of future benevolent 
work, — however small your part in the vast enter- 
prise may be, — this knowledge will surely react upon 
your own life, for the consciousness of duty well 
done enriches the soul as a strengthening cordial 
enlivens the body. 

Considering, for the purpose of this study, the 
retroactive benefits of Christlike service and gen- 
erous giving, both for the relief of distress and for 
evangelizing the non-Christian peoples of the 
world, we are impressed with the force of a remark 
by J. Campbell Whyte, directing head of the great 
Laymen's Missionary Movement, "No man ever 
reaches his maximum local efficiency until he enters 
into his inheritance as a citizen of the world" ; also 
the keen observation of Jacob Riis, made after in- 
vestigating the causes of a revival of religion in his 
native city of Copenhagen, "Every dollar con- 
tributed to foreign missions releases ten dollars' 

79 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

worth of energy for dealing with the tasks at our 
own doors." 

"Give, and it shall be given unto you ; good meas- 
ure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, 
shall they give into your bosom. For with what 
measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again." 
Christ put that promise into the heart of Christianity 
and it has never been recalled. If "the gift without 
the giver is bare," a gift without a sure reward to 
the giver is unknown. If men are careless and for- 
getful, God is not, and no smallest sacrifice made 
for his poor or for the advancement of his cause, 
is ever forgotten. Truly, "the heart grows rich 
with giving" and he is poor indeed who hoards all 
his money to spend it upon himself. 

A notable example of enrichment by giving is that 
of D. K. Pearsons, Chicago's best known philan- 
thropist, who died in April, 1912. Years ago Mr. 
Pearsons determined to be the executor and distribu- 
tor of his own estate. Christian colleges appealed to 
him as being especially worthy of assistance. He 
gave them money on condition of their securing a 
similar, or in some cases a larger, amount, thus 
multiplying many fold his own gift. Mr. Pearsons 
was a wise steward. In enough cases to provide for 
his old age, he asked for a small annuity during his 
lifetime. Having provided thus for all normal 
wants to the end of his days, he reveled in the joy 
of giving away his entire fortune of something 
more than fourteen million dollars. He testified that 

80 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

in thus providing for the continuance of Christian 
education at the sacrifice of his own fortune he 
experienced the keenest satisfaction of his long life. 
His friends testified that his heart grew richer with 
each passing year until he became one of the choice 
spirits of his age. 

But giving service is even more enriching than 
giving cash. Half a lifetime ago a young medical 
missionary named Joseph Plum Cochran went out 
to Persia. With an abandon of zeal he threw him- 
self into relieving bodily distress, while all the time 
he strove to put the religion of Christ into the hearts 
of his patients. In his recently published book, 
"The Foreign Doctor," Robert E. Speer says, "In 
the midst of turmoil and hate, Persian officials, Mos- 
lem ecclesiastics, Turks, Nestorians, Kurds and 
Christians shared alike in his ministry of love." 

But while the Christian doctor was giving him- 
self to Persia he was all unconsciously enriching his 
character until he built for himself an imperishable 
memorial. Continuing, Dr. Speer says, "Decorated 
by the Shah for his services to the country and 
exercising a powerful influence upon the political 
life of the people, it was yet the sterling Christian 
character of the man, rather than his skill as a 
physician or his wise council in political affairs, 
which won for him the respect and favor of people 
of every race, creed and rank." 

Christianity is a religion of sacrifice, but of sacri- 
fice which brings a rich reward. From out its 

81 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

gracious lips there sounds evermore an imperative 
command with but one alternative : "Serve or give 
that others may be released to serve ; go or give that 
others more favorably conditioned may go." 

The true Christian will not hesitate; it will be 
simply a question of wise stewardship and the great 
Father, seeing the sacrifice and evidence of love, 
will send his reward openly. 



82 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Six 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY SELF-CONTROL 

Self-control has long been recognized as the chief 
factor in earthly success, the conqueror of tempta- 
tion and the keynote of character. Excess in eating 
and in drinking, in working and enjoying, has 
thrown the blight of early decay and death over 
millions of the most promising youths and maidens 
in every age. "Standing with reluctant feet where 
the brook and river meet," they have ever been the 
objects on which this insidious foe has concentrated 
his efTorts. 

It is the moment when the animal in man is most 
alive and when wisdom has not yet taken the helm 
to guide the life-ship safely; when the false prom- 
ises of the self-indulgence fiend are taken for truth; 
when, to vary slightly Emerson's thought, it seems as 
if the whole world had been created to give pleasure 
to one man. Added to these natural tempters, one 
confesses with shame and confusion, society has set 
up others. How unpardonable it is that any boy 
should ever be allowed to feel that he is not a man 
until he begins to smoke ! that he is setting himself 

83 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

up for a saint if he will not drink with his friends ! 
while modern society, preening itself constantly 
upon its intelligence and culture, has little with 
which to entertain a youth if he holds back from 
the variety theater or will not play cards and gam- 
ble a little on the result. 

Perhaps it is not strange that so many of the 
darlings of our homes go down before this on- 
slaught. It requires a heroism as great as that of 
the early Christian martyrs for able-bodied young 
men and women, tingling with life, to defy the edicts 
of modern social customs, subdue temptations from 
within and live the pure, clean, honorable lives their 
Maker would have them live. 

If older people are eager to help them, there are 
two special things, among many, which they can do. 
First, let them strive to break down these false 
notions selfish and self-indulgent society has set up. 
We know that instead of making him appear more 
manly, smoking his first cigar and taking his first 
drink of liquor is to a young man what tearing off 
his epaulets and breaking his sword is to an army 
officer. It is the beginning of his degradation. Not 
only this, but in our day it shuts the doors of many 
of the best lines of labor against him. 

"Several of our leading banks and mercantile 
houses," said an experienced New York merchant 
recently, "are making an absolute rule of engaging 
no clerk who smokes, whether pipe, cigars or cigar- 
ettes. We find the young fellow who takes to 

8 4 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

smoking takes to blundering and idleness and wast- 
ing his time, besides very often going to questionable 
places of amusement out of office hours. We simply 
will not take a young man who may be efficient in 
every other way but who smokes. If he won't give 
up tobacco, we give him up. Young men and youths 
have no need of opiates ; a busy, overtaxed merchant 
or banker may perhaps receive benefit from a cigar 
after luncheon or at the end of the day's work, but 
young fellows have no right to drug their energies 
with tobacco." 

"There is no question but that the habits of a 
boy count with his employer," said a railroad man 
of prominence. "A watch is kept on the boy, and 
if he is found smoking it counts against him; if he 
keeps late hours he is at a discount compared with 
the boy who goes to bed early; if he drinks or gam- 
bles it is fatal to him. A boy needs every ounce of 
his strength in order to succeed, and these vicious 
habits are a waste of power." 

Thus has the great world of commerce risen up 
against these false standards social custom has set 
up. If now the fathers and mothers and the mature 
friends of these young men would take an equally 
strong stand, perhaps after a while the truth would 
appear so clearly that even a youth would be forced 
to know that he is tearing off his own epaulets and 
breaking his own sword when he begins these hurt- 
ful habits of self-indulgence. 

The second way mature friends may infinitely aid 

85 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

youths of to-day is by helping them in the cultiva- 
tion of self-control. This is what Benjamin Frank- 
lin in his homely philosophy would call "putting 
meal in the sack to make it stand upright" ; what the 
business world calls "stiffening a man's backbone" ; 
what we may call "giving substance to a youth's 
character." 

In boyhood, during the spring floods, I used to 
watch a river overflow its banks and spread with 
damaging tides over acres of fertile farms. So 
swift was its current that all weak things bent and 
broke under its onrush. Only the strongest trees 
stood the awful test. It was inspiring to see the oaks 
and hickories endure the strain. When a great wave 
would roll against them bending them over for a 
time one would fear they were gone, but in a mo- 
ment they would lift their heads, shake off the 
encumbering water like a living thing and stand up 
again as straight and fearless as sentinels. 

Often have I watched floods of temptation sweep 
OA^er a city. They come, as a rule, in the autumn, 
when the days shorten and the evenings grow long; 
when the frivolous and self-indulgent suggest exces- 
sive pastimes that rob youth of the choicest hours 
for self -culture and fasten habits that weaken the 
body and stupefy the soul, that nurture disobedience 
to parents and neglect of the church. 

Right-minded youths of to-day really do not wish 
to yield to these temptations and they prefer to con- 
serve their energies, to obey their parents and be true 

86 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

to the Saviour they have confessed, but the moment 
they begin to practice these things they find that 
society wants them only for what they can con- 
tribute to it; they discover that they are being left 
out of many parties and pleasant companies where 
the questionable pastimes they oppose are freely 
indulged. Their pride is touched and they suddenly 
feel very lonely! Ah! do we not know that they 
are in the flood tide of temptation? Will they en- 
dure like my oaks and hickories of long ago, or will 
they yield and be swept away like the tall weeds 
of the meadow? This hour of all others they need 
our help. If they win now the rest is easy; if they 
yield, then a lower level for the whole long life 
before them! 

Happy those youths who have gathered strength 
in the time of peace ; who have been surrounded by 
manly and womanly examples; who have heard it 
evermore asserted that "a good name is rather to 
be chosen than great riches" ; that though it costs the 
most in labor and self-denial, character is worth a 
thousand times more than flashy accomplishment; 
that to arouse worthy ambition toward emulation 
has greater reward in the end than the ability to 
arouse laughter for a moment; that to be master of 
yourself makes you master of every situation in 
which you will ever find yourself. 

Recognizing the necessity of self-control in the 
face of danger, it is said Japan submits her young 
cadets to serious and nerve-trying tests. Among 

87 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

these is the mounting of a loaded cannon on a re- 
volving frame in the center of the mess table. A 
long fuse is lighted and it is known that some time 
during the meal that cannon, whose mouth is on a 
level with the young officers' heads, will be dis- 
charged. With its load of death waiting only the 
moment of contact with the fire in the fast-burning 
fuse, the cannon points in turn to each man's head 
a hundred times during the evening. Not until they 
can stand this test unflinchingly are men counted 
ready for service. 

With the same end in view, let us reverse the 
method, surrounding our youths not with dangerous 
temptations but with such examples of righteous- 
ness and self-control as shall strengthen them for 
all time, that they "may be able to withstand in the 
evil day, and, having done all, to stand." 

Self-control must be cultivated in youth. Like 
many growing things, it flourishes and brings forth 
abundant harvests if planted early. If neglected 
until the midsummer of life it languishes and pro- 
vides no strength. One readily confesses that dif- 
ference in temperment makes the task hard or easy, 
yet all experience proves that self-control may be 
cultivated successfully by every life that determines 
to do it. 

Surely Charles Kingsley was right when he said 
that "any man or woman in any age, under any 
circumstances, who will, can live the heroic life and 
exercise heroic influence." So I believe any man or 

88 



PROGRESS IN, CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

woman who will -can cultivate self-control until it 
becomes a dominating and helpful habit. 

The formation of any habit by which we do 
things unconsciously requires a longer or a shorter 
period of conscious effort. That young woman who 
plays the piano so charmingly without seeming to 
even look at the keys — how many days and years 
of hard, mind-directed practice were put into her 
accomplishment? or that young man who so easily 
and swiftly runs the linotype machine in a down- 
town printing office — do you think for a moment 
that his present proficiency required no weeks and 
months when mind and will were centered on every 
movement of the fingers while they gathered their 
skill? 

Good habits are not indigenous to the average 
youth. If he would have them they must be culti- 
vated, and the sooner he becomes master of himself 
the sooner will he be able to direct his efforts in the 
gathering of every coveted virtue. 

A few years ago a young man called at my home 
and asked to see me on very urgent business. I was 
amazed at the nature of his errand: he asked for 
money that he might go to an institution and be 
cured of the cigarette habit. I do not remember 
ever taking part in a more pathetic conversation. 
His imagination was vivid and his experiences had 
evidently been extensive. 

"I am willing to provide the necessary funds," 
I said at length, "but I will gladly provide twice 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

as much to -start you in some legitimate work if you 
will rise up in the strength of your own manhood 
and stop this thing that is so cursing your life." 

"I stop it ?" he cried. "I can no more stop smok- 
ing than I can stop breathing — I tell you the Devil 
has got me down. I try to stop, I throw away all 
my supplies, I resolve that never again shall the 
damnable stuff enter my nostrils, and before an hour 
is gone I will steal if necessary to get a new supply. 
I haven't any mind and I haven't any will. The 
brute in me is in control and I will have to have help 
from the outside." 

Full well do I know that many a youth in every 
city is forming habits that will prove as great a 
curse as the cigarette habit was to this young man, 
habits that will weaken and stultify every faculty 
and send him halting and infirm to maturity and 
old age. In some it is the habit of giving full vent 
to envy and anger and the letting fly of cruel and 
heart-stinging words. In others it is the satisfying 
of fleshy appetites that are fast becoming abnormal 
and will soon begin to weaken both body and mind. 
Still others, to one or both of these are adding 
habits of laziness and disobedience to parents that 
are fitting them not for society but for the reforma- 
tory or perhaps the penitentiary. 

If only it were possible to force upon the attention 
of such young people the example of the Great 
Teacher in his boyhood. After that memorable 
scene in the temple in Jerusalem, when the attention 

90 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

of the whole nation had been drawn to him, when 
he might have become conceited and refused to sub- 
mit to parental restraint, he still returned to 
Nazareth and was subject unto his parents, grow- 
ing in wisdom while he increased in stature and in 
favor with God and man. 

We do not know the process of his cultivation. 
We may only infer it from the ripened fruits; for 
when Jesus emerged from the obscurity that had 
surrounded his youth he had such command of 
every faculty and such perfect control of himself 
that kings were amazed and rulers stood abashed 
before him. "Behold, the man!" cried one who 
found no fault in him. And we cry, "Behold him, 
indeed! A man without bad habits, a man weak- 
ened by no excesses, a man in perfect control of 
himself; surely such a man may well be the exam- 
ple for all men who shall come after." 

O that young men and young women could 
know what those know who have reached matu- 
rity. How clean they would keep their lives, how 
free from hurtful habits, how eagerly they would 
strive to remain in perfect control of every faculty! 
Are you not moved when you see that only those 
who do these things have earthly happiness, only 
these lead normal lives, only these really help the 
world ? 

When a youth has mastered arithmetic all higher 
mathematics come easy. Let him neglect this pre- 
liminary work and algebra, geometry, trigonome- 

9i 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

try and calculus prove a labyrinth through which 
he must be led as one blind and senseless. Let a 
youth approach maturity, — the work period of his 
life, — with no bad habits and complete master of 
himself, the world readily yields him fortune and a 
place. 

Such a man or woman can say with the poet: 

It matters not how straight the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate, 
I am the captain of my soul. 

He is like a Solomon assuming rule of the king- 
dom he has inherited; no man can now unfit him 
for it, no man can take it away; at least no man 
but himself. 

Over against this glowing possibility how many 
men and women do w T e see reach maturity with the 
blight of intemperence thus early marring their 
lives ! Already many are weakened by needless dis- 
ease, many minds are muddled now from the mass 
of unwholesome reading- and sight-seeing they have 
allowed themselves, many a once pure soul is 
smirched by evil-thinking that has all too often 
led to evil-acting, while a number so great as to 
appall the bravest heart reach manhood and 
womanhood already writhing in the meshes of that 
quintette of vices called dancing and card-playing 
and gambling and smoking and drinking, so much 
alike in their effects and tendencies that one is 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

forced to believe they are all children of the same 
hideous mother. 

Perhaps the last of these is the worst, although, 
so far as my own comfort is concerned, when car- 
ried to excess, as it so often is, I had as lief talk 
to a man befouled by whisky as to one befouled 
by tobacco, and I cannot but pity the pure, clean 
women who are forced to endure constant associa- 
tion with men who carry about evermore all the 
evil smells of a smokehouse. 

But the blight of liquor is twofold — it weak- 
ens and brutalizes the body and it snuffs out 
the soul. The world says plainly, "No man weak- 
ened and stultified by liquor shall have a place in 
the larger activities of society," and the Bible just 
as plainly declares "no drunkard shall inherit the 
kingdom of heaven." Have you forgotten, men, 
the eternal consequences of the sin with which 
you are trifling? which, by your vote sustaining the 
saloon, you are making it so hard for weaker men 
to avoid? 

The story of John B. Gough is typical and not 
so unusual as to lack value as a warning example. 
He arrived in America from his English home as 
promising a young man as his age produced. He 
was gifted with voice and presence and a mar- 
velous power to sway and influence men. 

In the early years of his life in America he was 
tempted by companions to liquor and excess and 
at last reached manhood totally unfitted to assume 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

its duties. In a single paragraph of his auto- 
biography he tells the story of his start in sin. 
After the death of his mother he became separated 
from an only sister and soon found himself alone 
and penniless in New York, and this is the story 
of his fate: 

I boarded in Grand Street at the time and soon after laid 
the foundation of many of my future sorrows. I possessed 
a tolerably good voice and sang pretty well, having also the 
faculty of imitation rather strongly developed and being well 
stocked with amusing stories, I was introduced into the society 
of thoughtless and dissipated young men, to whom my talents 
made me welcome. These companions were what is termed 
respectable, but they drank. I now began to attend the 
theaters frequently and felt ambitious of strutting my hour 
upon the stage. By slow but sure degrees I forgot the lessons 
of wisdom which my mother had taught me, lost all relish for 
the great truths of religion, neglected my devotions and con- 
sidered an actor's situation to be the ne plus ultra of greatness. 

From this start John B. Gough's fall was swift 
and absolute. He drifted from place to place, 
a shiftless, worthless drunkard. In an hour of 
prosperity a beautiful young girl had married him, 
but she soon died in childbirth from neglect and 
a broken heart. He tried to reform but. follow- 
ing their usual fiendish practices, the saloon-keepers 
would seek him out and tempt him to drink again. 
Excess was followed by delerium tremens and the 
poor wretch was face to face with death, when, 
as he staggered along the street one day, a man 
tapped him on the shoulder. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

I want to give the turning point in the life of 
John B. Gough in his own language, with the hope 
in my heart that the example of the individual 
worker who reached him may be full of sugges- 
tion for everyone who reads his story touching 
his own future attitude toward drinking men. 

The month of October had nearly drawn to a close, and 
on its last Sunday evening I wandered out into the streets 
pondering, as well as I was able to do, for I was somewhat 
intoxicated, on my lone and friendless condition. My frame 
was much weakened by habitual indulgence in intoxicating 
liquors and little fitted to bear the cold of winter which had 
already begun to come on. But I had no means of protecting 
myself against the bitter blast, and as I anticipated my coming 
misery I staggered along, homeless, aimless and all but 
hopeless. 

Some one tapped me on the shoulder. An unusual thing 
that to occur to me, for no one now cared to come in contact 
with the wretched, shabby-looking drunkard. I was a dis- 
grace, "a living, walking disgrace." I could scarcely believe 
my senses when I turned and met a kind look ; the thing was 
so unusual and so entirely unexpected that I questioned the 
reality of it, but so it was. It was the first touch of kindness 
which I had known for months, and simple and trifling as 
the circumstance may appear to many, it went right to my 
heart, and like the wing of an angel, troubled the waters in 
that stagnant pool of affection and made them once more 
reflect a little of the light of human love. The person who 
touched my shoulder was an entire stranger. I looked at him 
wondering what his business was with me. Regarding me 
very earnestly and apparently with much interest, he said: 

"Mr. Gough, I believe." 

"That is my name," I replied and was passing on. 

"You have been drinking to-day," said the stranger in a 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

kind voice which arrested my attention and quite dispelled 
any anger at what I might otherwise have considered inter- 
ference in my affairs. 

"Yes, sir," I replied, "I have." 

"Why do you not sign the pledge?" was the next query. 

I considered for a minute or two and then informed the 
strange friend who had so unexpectedly interested himself in 
my behalf that I had no hope of ever again becoming a 
sober man; that I was without a single friend in the world 
who cared for me or what became of me; that I fully ex- 
pected to die very soon, I cared not how soon, or whether 
I died drunk or sober; and in fact, that I was in a condition 
of utter recklessness. 

The stranger regarded me with a benevolent look, took 
me by the arm and asked me how I should like to be as I 
once was, respectable and esteemed, well clad and sitting, as 
I used to, in a place of worship, enabled to meet my friends 
as in old times and receive from them the pleasant nod of 
recognition as formerly — in fact, become a useful member 
of society. 

"Oh," I replied, "I should like all those things first rate, 
but I have no expectation that such a thing will ever happen. 
Such a change cannot be possible." 

"Only sign our pledge," remarked my friend, "and I will 
warrant that it shall be so ; sign it and I will introduce you 
myself to good friends, who will feel an interest in your 
welfare and take pleasure in helping you to keep your good 
resolutions. Only, Mr. Gough, sign the pledge and all will 
be as I have said and more, too." 

Oh, how pleasantly fell those words of kindness 'on my 
crushed and bruised heart ! I had long been a stranger to 
feelings such as now awoke in my bosom. A chord had been 
touched which vibrated to the tones of love. Hope once 
more dawned and I began to think, strange as it appeared, 
that such things as my friend promised me might come to 
pass. On the instant I resolved to try at least 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

The rest of the glorious history of this remark- 
able man, who probably led more people to sign 
the temperance pledge than any other man who 
ever lived, is well known. It did not go easily 
with him for years. Several times he fell and 
once flagrantly broke the pledge, but he signed it 
again and rose to his work stronger than before. 
He gained control of himself at last, not only be- 
coming a Christian himself but leading thousands 
to like resolution and service. 

One word more of warning which he spoke in his 
maturity I would give. It will make its own 
pathetic appeal. Said he : 

A man can never recover from the effects of such a severe 
experience, morally or physically. Lessons learned in such a 
school are not forgotten, impressions made in such a furnace 
of sin are permanent; the nature so warped in such crooked 
ways must retain in some degree the shape; lodgments are 
made by such horrible contacts and associations that nothing 
but the mighty spirit of God can eradicate. 

Young man, I say to you, look back at the fire where I lay 
scorching, — at the bed of torture where the iron entered my 
soul; yes, look back at the past, standing, as I trust I do, 
under the arch of the bow, one base of which rests on the 
dark days and the other I hope on the sunny slopes of 
paradise, — I say to you, in view of the awful evil spreading 
around you, "Beware, tamper not with the accursed thing, — 
and may God forbid that you should ever suffer as I have 
suffered, or be called to fight such a battle as I have fought 
for body and soul." 

In one of his choicest comedies (As You Like 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

It) Shakspere presents a strong old man who, 
explanation of his power, is led to say: 



in 



For in my youth I never did apply 
Hot and rebellious liquors to my blood, 
Nor did not, with unbashful forhead, woo, 
The means of weakness and debility, 
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
Frosty, but kindly. 

In these words the great poet has given us the 
only key to a strong and happy old age. If we 
would, as Job's friend promised him, "come to thy 
grave in a full age, like as a shock of grain 
cometh in its season," bearing our best and fully 
ripened fruit in the last years of our life, then 
must we guard well the years called youth and 
maturity. 'We must gain that control of the body 
that will make it the servant and not the master 
of the soul ; we must submit to no temptation, how- 
ever promising, that may finally put the ball and 
chain of destructive habit upon our life. God 
grant that no soul who reads this page will ever 
be obliged to say as Macbeth was, when life's sun 
is near its setting : 

My way of life 
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; 
And that which should accompany old age, 
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
I must not look to have ; but in their stead, 
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath, 
Which the poor heart would feign deny, but dare not. 

9 8 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Over against this may we all so live, so control 
the life and so serve God and man that when our 
summons comes to join the innumerable caravan 
we may without irreverence or falsehood take the 
words of the great apostle as our own and say: 

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I 
have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me the 
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
shall give to me at that day ; and not to me only, but also to all 
them that have loved his appearing. 



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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Seven 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY FORGETTING 

In the intellectual world every man is a king. 
As one in authority his soul says to one servant, 
go ! and he goeth ; to another, come ! and he cometh. 
If his servants are not other human beings they 
are equally capable of- ministering to the soul's 
necessities and of contributing to its happiness. I 
speak of the servants called Conception, Thought, 
Memory. At the direction of the soul these ser- 
vants hurry forth everywhither and bring in from 
their journeyings things new and old for the enrich- 
ment of their royal master. 

Not least among these helpers is the servant 
called memory. Without her man would remain a 
helpless infant. She keeps an unfailing record of 
the past. The lessons of yesterday would be value- 
less to the life did not memory treasure them up 
in her stout granary and hold them ready for de- 
livery on the slightest intimation of her king. 
Learning would be impossible without the constair' 
aid of this faithful agent. Likewise choice would 
have to be given up, for without memory there could 

ioo 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

be no comparison. Man's happiness would be 
largely curtailed if memory refused to bring to the 
mind the experiences and delights of the past. 

But valuable as is this servant of the soul, she 
sometimes serves man all too well. The moment 
memory, by her faithful treasuring up of past sor- 
rows, causes her master to become downhearted 
and depressed; the moment she causes him to stop 
all effort, and rely upon past achievements for pres- 
ent glory; the moment, by a detailed review of the 
words and actions of others which one has looked 
upon as an injury, she causes the heart to refuse 
forgiveness, — that moment does memory cease to 
be a help and becomes a hinderance to man's pro- 
gress. "Forgiveness," said the ancients, "is better 
than revenge." 

If it is well to cultivate the power of memory 
it is also well to bring to perfection the power of 
forgetting. When Simonides offered to teach 
Themistocles the art of memory he answered, 
"Oh, rather teach me the art of forgetting: for I 
often remember what I would not and cannot forget 
what I would." 

Coleridge held that knowledge is indestructible, 
that once entering the mind it would ever remain 
there; and from this he derived a strong argument 
for future retribution. Ancient thinkers conceived 
of the mind as a kind of plaque over the face of 
which was spread a thin coating of soft wax. By 
the use of a stylus this wax was written over with 

IOI 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

some fact which it was desired should be held in 
remembrance, and then all was allowed to harden, 
thus making a practically indestructible record of 
the fact inscribed. In some such way, said they, 
the mind is impressed with whatsoever comes be- 
fore it and the record becomes permanent. 

Leaving aside the possibility of the truth of such 
an hypothesis, we are aware that, whether or not 
it is possible to obliterate absolutely from the mind 
those things which have come before it, we can at 
least so put from us hurtful memories that they 
shall not hinder our advancement ; and this becomes 
the imperative duty of every man and woman who 
would advance in Christian culture. 

By many who have tried it, it has been found 
most helpful to forget experiences that tend to 
hinder present progress in differing degrees. Some 
are to be as nearly obliterated from the mind as 
possible, others are to be so forgotten that their 
remembrance will only impel the mind to avoid 
them, while still others are to be so forgotten that 
they shall not be made a ground for present in- 
activity. 

In the first class; — those experiences of the 
past which are to be put entirely from one and 
never for a moment entertained when by any means 
they are brought before the mind, — we must place 
first, all injuries, real or supposed, that may have 
been done us by others. There is perhaps no one 
thing that so puts an end to all growth of the soul 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

as the cherishing of these memories. The splendid 
maple tree that has for so many years befriended 
a household with shelter and shade one day re- 
ceives a great gash in its side from a member of the 
very household it has so long benefited. As if 
shelter and shade were not enough, it must now 
give of its very life's blood that the taste of a 
thoughtless boy for maple syrup may be favored. 
Does the tree now, because of this real injury from 
one it has ever benefited, refuse longer to give shade 
and shelter from the storm? Does it treasure the 
memory of that old wound, shriveling up its leaves 
and refusing the next spring to bring forth foliage ? 
Not at all. Such actions are never seen in nature. 
It is only among men and women, who have been so 
highly favored of God, who are twice as far above 
the tree as the tree is above the stone, that such 
actions are found. No matter if God has forgiven 
them more a thousand times than any grievance they 
can possibly have against a neighbor, they will still 
go on grieving him and hindering the advance of 
themselves and the community while they refuse 
to forget what in all probability is nothing at all 
if fully known, or at most, insignificant when the 
growth of the soul is being considered. 

As the barbarous custom of the Flathead In- 
dians of binding a board upon the head of their 
infants hindered the proper development of that 
member and the advance of intellectual life, so the 
binding upon the soul, by the power of memory, 

103 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

of so-called injuries from others, hinders the growth 
and full development of what is the very center 
of man's being. Forget the things which are 
behind and reach forward to the things which are 
before. Will you stay behind and gather weeds 
when by going forward you may gather roses? 
Are you willing to remain where you are, cherish- 
ish all your old memories, eating husks and wasting 
to a skeleton, or will you cast those old concerns 
from you, advance to your proper place in the 
world, grow to be a broad, generous, robust Chris- 
tian and member of society, and in the kingdom 
of God partake of a banquet which the Father will 
gladly prepare? 

Second. One who would progress must put away 
from the mind all memories of self when those 
memories urge us to forsake every other interest 
that self may be advanced. A man had better be 
a snail than be utterly selfish if he wishes to ad- 
vance. The selfish man is not only chained to a 
thousand unseen anchors behind but he is pushed 
back by a solid mountain of opposition on the part 
of those in front to whom he is refusing to do his 
duty. The man who is able to forget himself and 
work for others realizes at last that during this 
period of self-suspension he has been rushed for- 
ward by those he has endeavored to serve to a point 
far beyond his thought or expectation. Forgetting 
themselves at El Caney during the Cuban War, 
Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders made 

104 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

their names immortal while trying to serve their 
country. Forgetting themselves, eight men who 
had never been heard of before outside of their 
immediate circle of friends floated on the old col- 
lier Merrimac to a position in the estimation of 
the world they could never by any means have 
attained were they trying to serve themselves. 

A certain man of old, about to go from his home 
on a long journey, called one of his servants to him 
and gave him two talents without any instructions 
as to what he should do with the money. He might 
naturally have thought at once of himself. "This 
money will buy me many pleasures. It is hardly 
large enough to put into any speculations, besides 
my lord may have meant for me to use it in push- 
ing myself forward, in adding to my own happi- 
ness." But instead of this he forgot about himself 
entirely. He took these two talents, small as the 
amount was, and put them to the exchangers. Little 
by little they grew until, when the lord of that ser- 
vant finally did come back, the money had been 
doubled. The master at once recognized his ser- 
vant's faithfulness. He realized that he had been 
guarding his master's interests instead of his own, 
and the words came gladly, "Thou hast been faith- 
ful to thy trust, faithful in looking after the wel- 
fare of others, faithful over a few things ; I will 
make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into 
the joy of thy lord." 

"Of all that have tried the selfish experiment," 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

says Dr. Johnson, "let one come forth and say he 
has succeeded. He that has made gold his idol, 
has it satisfied him ? He that has toiled in the fields 
of ambition, has he been repaid? He that has ran- 
sacked every theater of sensual enjoyment, is he 
content? Can any answer in the affirmative? Not 
one! And when his conscience shall ask him, and 
ask him it will, 'Where are the hungry to whom you 
gave meat, the thirsty to whom you gave drink, the 
stranger whom you sheltered, the sick whom ye 
ministered unto,' how will he feel when he must 
answer, 'I have done none of those things — I 
thought only of myself.'?" 

As the heart grows more public-spirited it grows 
in grace. As a man forgets self and thinks of 
serving others will his whole nature expand and 
himself become beloved and honored by all who 
know him. 

A second class of memories which must be for- 
gotten if we would progress are memories of our 
sufferings and sorrows. A modern French author 
says: 

Feeble natures live in griefs instead of changing them into 
the apothegms of experience. They saturate themselves 
with them and use them to retrace their steps daily into past 
misfortunes. To forget is the grand secret of strong and 
creative natures — to forget as nature does, who never regards 
herself as passe, but recommences every hour the mysteries 
of her indefatigable births. 

But these memories are not to be forgotten as 
1 06 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

the first class — utterly cast out from the life — but 
rather forgotten as sources of depression and sad- 
ness. The soul bound down by weight of woe can 
do little in winning new victories. It is as though 
one would swim to a distant shore with a mill- 
stone about his neck. Sorrow and suffering are 
sent to us not to hinder us but to help us if we but 
rightly comprehend them. They are as balloons to 
lift us upward, not millstones to drag us down. 

Says Mrs. Campbell, that gracious soul in "Step- 
ping Heavenward," who had lost her husband and 
all her family and was herself an invalid: "Hus- 
band, family, friends are indeed links in a chain 
by which we are bound to God, but as these links 
are one after another removed the chain becomes 
shorter and we come closer to God, until at last 
nothing intervenes and we are ourselves united 
directly to him." 

If this be the office of our sufferings and our 
sorrows why should we allow them to make us sad ? 
Joy should be the only feeling found in the heart 
approaching nearer and nearer to God. Joy and 
progress are firm friends, and they love each other's 
company. The people who are the most truly ad- 
vancing are the people on whose faces a smile is 
most often seen. If then sorrow is depressing you 
and making dark a world that is bright to others, 
the admonition of Paul is for you. "Forgetting the 
things which are behind, and stretching forth to the 
things which are before" — larger growth in 

107 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

spiritual things, richer experiences in the Chris- 
tian life, higher joys in the life that is to come; 
remembering these things, "press on toward the 
goal unto the prize." 

Experience proves the truth of the contention of 
Dr. Edgar: 

The city of God could ill spare this river of forgetfulness. 
Indeed, it is only in the city of God that it flows in crystal 
purity and can be drunk without danger. There are muddy 
streams which ingenuity provides, intoxicants which rob man- 
kind through the senses of their memory; but the waking- 
time comes and the furies are afoot once more. In the Lethe 
of God, on the contrary, we may drink and forget a painful, 
imperfect past, so far as this would keep us from a nobler 
future. 

Still another class of experiences must be for- 
gotten in still another way as we go from the less 
to the greater; I speak of those which are to be so 
forgotten that their only recurrence will impel the 
mind to avoid them. 

Among them may be classed past failures, evil 
companionships and past pleasures and indulgences 
that are ever inviting us back. In the "Auto- 
biography of a Criminal" that appeared recently in 
one of our prominent religious journals the author 
tells us of many times when through the inter- 
cession of friends or by his own efforts he had 
straightened up and tried to start a new life, he 
could get along well until by some chance he fell in 

108 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

with old companions; then everything was thrown 
over and he sank down lower than before. 

Past failures, too, stand like a "Giant's Cause- 
way" before many capable men and women. Al- 
though happening in the past they in some way 
shift their position to the present and stand as 
impassable barriers to effort or success. And yet 
past failures may argue more for future success 
than for future failure. We do not forget that 
Demosthenes was hissed from the stage when he 
first began to speak. It seemed like failure, but it 
was the cause of his success. Nearly every writer 
of any prominence had his first manuscripts re- 
turned, unused by publishers. Mr. Moody was 
strongly advised not to try to speak in public but 
to be content with being a respectful hearer of 
others. 

I join Dr. W. J. Dawson in saying: "The cour- 
age of forgetfulness is not only an act of faith, it is 
the one source of moral progress. We must be 
perpetually cutting ourselves free from the past 
if we are to push on to a larger and better future. 
The artist forgets his early failures, the author his 
first grotesque experiments in literature, and the 
saint his first stumbling steps for the same reason, 
a reason which is imperative, that no progress is 
possible to a mind clogged by the weight of past 
errors." 

The man, therefore, who so cherishes the memory 
of past failures as to be hindered in his progress 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

is being hindered by the very things that have urged 
other men onward. He will be more careful at 
this point next time, will guard small leakages, 
small mistakes, small losses which, although small, 
often make the difference between success and fail- 
ure. In seeming failure "Moses grew into one 
of the princeliest of men, while Paul in the humble 
trade of tentmaker reached the sublime in character 
and service." 

Headley says of General Ulysses S. Grant: "A 
strong man by nature, he had to learn by failures 
how to win ultimate success. We find that both 
he and Sherman, who at the close of the war stood 
up as our foremost generals, came very near being 
removed from command for their mistakes, or at 
least want of success." Abraham Lincoln was de- 
feated when he first ran for the Legislature. The 
American Revolution, gloriously successful as it 
was at the last, began in ignominious defeat. 

Time was when Christianity itself seemed al- 
ready passed into the shades of oblivion. Its 
founder was nailed to a cross, its early adherents 
were dispersed, those who dared to advocate its 
principles laid themselves liable to instant death, 
but that early defeat was quickly forgotten when 
the risen Christ appeared before them. What, has 
he power over the grave? Can strong sepulcher 
and Roman guard not hold the body of the Lord? 
Surely then his spirit is free to go whithersoever 
it wills. So, taking heart, those early fathers gave 

no 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

root to the seed, gave permanence to the Chris- 
tianity that blesses the world to-day. If the past 
has held only failures for you, forget the past, look 
not mournfully into a time that comes not back 
again, but, taking advantage of the glorious pres- 
ent and the auspicious future, create success for 
yourself and be an inspiring example to others. 

A fourth class of memories that must be forgot- 
ten before any large progress can attend our ef- 
forts are those successes which, while they need not 
be entirely obliterated from the mind, must not 
be relied upon for present advancement or given 
as an excuse for present inactivity. 

The man who in present idleness is all the while 
dilating on what he has done in the past soon loses 
the respect and homage of his associates. A truly 
great man never does such a thing or one who has 
intentionally done a really great service. No more 
notable or timely illustration of this truth could be 
named than that of Assistant Naval Constructor 
Hobson in the Cuban War. His heroic exploit at 
the mouth of Santiago Bay gave him the homage 
of the w r orld and entitled him and his seven brave 
men to retirement from active service, but instead 
of choosing such an alternative and relying upon 
past achievement, Hobson went right on faithfully 
discharging the duties of his subordinate office and 
displayed no anxiety about the conferment of 
honors by the government. The man who has done 
one brave deed is the man best prepared to do 

in 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

others. So the man who has attained one success 
should not rely upon that success, but forgetting 
those things which are behind press forward to 
more and larger successes. 

Reliance upon conditions of birth is also fatal 
to progress. The history of any generation in free 
America bears full record to this well-known truth. 
Grateful as are the blessings an ample purse may 
supply, one had better be born a pauper than a 
millionaire if he desires to take a place in the world. 
It has been decreed that effort alone will bring a 
man into prominence. All those reared in the 
cradle of luxury are averse to effort. Many of them 
have been educated to .consider it degrading, and 
as a consequence they are doomed to eat, drink and 
be miserable and to-morrow die and be forgotten. 
If birth has given you noble ancestry or wealth, 
have a care lest your blessings entangle your feet 
as a net and forbid your going forward in the esti- 
mation of God and the world. 

In the ancient times God spake by the mouth of 
his prophet to the children of Israel: "Remember 
ye not the former things, neither consider the 
things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing." In 
the march of man from Eden to the millennium the 
old things must ever be superseded by the new and 
for present necessity the new will ever be superior to 
the old. Therefore it is right that the old shall be 
forgotten. Old ways of life, old methods of work, 
old ideas that are too narrow for to-day, and new 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

ways, methods, ideas substituted that will do most 
to promote the advancement of the race. 

The case of two college professors may well illus- 
trate this contention : The one is crowded full of 
some other man's thoughts that he is intending to 
recite, parrotlike, to his classes. He remembers 
the past only. The other has gone into his labora- 
tory or into his library and has discovered some- 
thing new. When he steps before his class it is to 
give them something in vital touch with the present, 
something that lives and breathes and grows. It 
has been well said, "One is a taskmaster, the other 
an inspiration." 

Travel by foot or horse was well enough perhaps 
before the interests of man became so complex, be- 
fore families became so widely separated, but with 
the advance of interests came the demand for some 
new methods of locomotion and Yankee ingenuity 
and skill responded with steamboat and locomotive. 
The hand loom furnished sufficient clothing for the 
members of a single household but when others, 
occupied by other interests, called upon their neigh- 
bor for cloth he was compelled to enlarge his 
loom and run it by steam power. Formerly it was 
only necessary to announce a service and open the 
church door and an audience would quickly fill the 
building: to-day doing this alone the preacher is 
rewarded with empty seats. "Old things are passed 
away; behold, they are become new." The nation, 
the individual, the church that fails to recognize and 

ii3 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

act upon this principle is standing still and will 
stand still until it wakens to the demands of the 
present 

The command is imperative. Forget those things 
which are behind. All past failures, all past mis- 
takes, all past injuries, all past experiences, all past 
methods that tend to hold us back, and, reaching 
forth to those things which are before, press toward 
the mark for the prize. 

Both the method and the object of Paul's activity 
are to be commended: "It is essential to enthu- 
siasm," says an able student, "to have our action 
unified into a single glorious purpose. Hence Paul 
could say, 'One thing I- do.' He would not allow 
the past to distract him from proper concentra- 
tion. One purpose of perfection dominated his 
whole life and conduct. Hence his draughts of the 
Lethean river fitted him for the sublime and single 
purpose of attaining the ideal of Christ. The soul 
who refuses to be distracted by the past and sets 
himself steadily to fulfill the mission God has given 
him will find in his concentration the secret of 
power." 

Best of all about Paul's endeavor w T as the glorious 
prize he sought : "the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." If the end does not justify the means it 
often suggests and consecrates them. The man 
who is ready to make growing into the likeness 
of Christ the sublime goal of his life will find all 
work glorified and all time precious. He will forget 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

all that hinders his progress, he will remember all 
that helps. To cherish hatred and envy and re- 
venge is to sink downward toward a demon ; to for- 
give and forget and serve is to rise upward toward 
God. Which way are you going? There are 
only two. 



US 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Eight 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY REMEMBERING 

After half a lifetime of wise observation and study 
Hamilton W. Mabie said, "The past is gone and 
cannot now be altered; the present is largely gov- 
erned by what we were in the past ; only the future 
is really in our control:" 

As we move out into this mysterious and uncer- 
tain period we should do so with the full exercise 
of every faculty we possess. The true man and 
woman will approach the future in the spirit of 
the old maxim : 

Work as though you would live forever; 

Live as though you would die to-morrow. 

For all who go forward in this spirit the future 
holds only the richest successes. 

We must remember that however dim and un- 
certain the future may look to us to-day, when it 
finally becomes "the present" it will be very much 
like the time through which we are now passing. 
It will call for sacrifice, it will call for altruism, it 
will call for intense activity. Man will no more be 

116 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

permitted to stand still in the next decade than he 
is in this. The Utopian haze that enshrouds the 
future largely vanishes as we approach it and pres- 
ent anticipations become realities only when the 
most strenuous effort is put forth during the days 
that intervene. Hence the possessions we greatly 
desire in the future will come to us only if we now 
set and keep in motion forces known to be produc- 
tive of them. 

The tiller of the soil, wishing a crop of corn in 
the autumn, appreciates the necessity of starting in 
the springtime with the right materials and of 
expending a certain amount of labor during all the 
intervening period. A picture is in his mind, not 
visible to the uninitiated. Upon mental canvas he 
spreads materials we call earth, seed, rain, sun, 
human labor, and a rich picture of a full granary 
rewards him. But that picture becomes a reality 
not because the future becomes the present, but be- 
cause during the time that intervenes every detail 
of the first ideal is carried out; ground is prepared, 
seed is sown, rain falls, sun shines, labor is ex- 
pended. As we perfect the roseate-hued canvas of 
our future let it be done with some such apprecia- 
tion as marks the course of these honest sons of 
toil. 

If man does not live by bread alone, neither does 
he progress by the exercise of one power alone. 
Powers of body, mind and spirit are set in motion 
and each one does a share. Of the powers of the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

mind, conception, thought, imagination do much, 
but memory performs a full, if not a lion's, share. 
It is only because of her that conception, thought, 
imagination, possess any value for the soul. As 
grains of sand become valuable to the builder of 
a palace only when millions of them have been 
gathered together, so thoughts, conceptions, imagi- 
nations, often microscopic in proportion, become 
valuable to the soul only when memory gathers them 
together and presents them in large numbers and in 
their true perspective. 

But how shall memory, which is denied any con- 
tact with the future, which is doomed to content 
herself with an unchangeable past which comes not 
back again, assist man in progressing? If this ques- 
tion is ever put it is before serious thought has had a 
chance to give her weighty answers. Memory is as 
essential to man's progress as wind to the sailboat, 
as steam to the locomotive, as electricity or gas to 
our motor cars. 

Like a mighty engine, memory pushes man for- 
ward by reminding him of past failures and the 
shortness of time. Like a powerful dynamo, she 
pulls him forward by reminding him of what other 
men have accomplished and of how pleasant it is to 
have material substance for the needs of the passing 
hours; as a coy maiden, she coaxes him onward 
with the recital of honors conferred upon others 
for bravery and service; as a frightful witch, she 
scares him into activity by reminding him of the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

awful doom of the slothful servant. Every day, 
every hour, does memory come in to assist man 
in his passing from the less to the greater. How- 
ever faulty the memory may prove to be as touching 
dates and names, she never fails in accurately bring- 
ing before the soul those thoughts and experiences 
that effect man's progress. The causes of one 
failure are never forgotten, the attendants of one 
success are readily recalled when another is 
promising. 

Without controversy man's progress in life would 
be more rapid if he followed the instructions of 
John the Divine to the Church of Ephesus. "Re- 
member therefore whence thou art fallen, and re- 
pent and do the first works." 1 

With this suggestion the memory carries us, 
through the inspired page, back to the days of 
man's creation and we see him fresh from the hand 
of his Maker, a magnificent specimen in body, mind 
and soul, capable of all things high and noble. Hav- 
ing been brought to the highest perfection of ani- 
mal creation, man stood as a perfect engine stands, 
waiting for the introduction of steam. Helpless 
now, it will become a giant then. So man, in all 
the perfection of form and feature, waited the in- 
breathing of the breath of life. With that divine 
breath there came into him knowledge, righteous- 
ness and true holiness ; all attributes of God himself. 
When it pleased God to make man after his own 

^ev. 2 : s. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

image it would only be following the usual course 
for him to make the image perfect — an exact re- 
production, in finite proportion, of the perfection of 
God himself. Behold thy natural and federal head 
springing forth, a Hercules, from the hand of God ! 
In his first estate Shakspere's picture is a true 
one, "What a piece of work is a man! how noble 
in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and mov- 
ing how express and admirable! in action how 
like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god !" 

Useless now your efforts to blot out the picture. 
Faithful memory cherishes it as one of her rightful 
possessions. Instead of endeavoring to blot it out, 
bring forth rich pigments and retouch the faded 
canvas ; make bright every feature that has become 
dimmed and gaze with yearning eye upon that per- 
fection which, if never again fully attainable, is at 
least nearly approachable. "Remember therefore 
whence thou art fallen." 

"Repent," comes the word of the prophet, "re- 
pent and do the first works." The preliminary 
work — the righting yourself with God — in knowl- 
edge, righteousness and true holiness and now, with 
effort continuous, unabating, you may go on toward 
perfection during the days that remain to you in 
this life. Touching indeed the moan of the poet 
in Hyperion's pages : 

Alas ! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out 
half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

fires of passion from day to day that man begins to see that 
the leaves which remain are few in number. 

With equal concern we cry, haste you, man and 
woman of the world. That picture of one-time 
perfection held before your wondering soul by 
memory's power is sent of God to rouse you from 
your state of self-satisfied inaction to one of striv- 
ing to regain what once was yours. The wildest 
flights of quick imagination will fail utterly to pro- 
duce a picture that will draw you from before as 
this splendid production of memory pushes you 
from behind. The one is man-made, tinged with 
all his weakness and imperfections; the other is of 
God, the infinite Father of all; to whom all colors 
of light and shade are as familiar as the noonday 
sun and who, with consummate skill, has blended 
all in the creation of a perfect man. "Remember 
therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent and 
do the first works." 

The wisdom of the Preacher led him in days 
now three thousand years agone to yearn over the 
lives of boys and girls and to admonish them in 
words of love : "Remember also thy Creator in the 
days of thy youth." 1 

"O wad some power the giftie gie us" to see in 
youth what present practices will yield by the time 
old age is upon us, to see that if we remember our 
Creator in the days of our youth he will remember 

"•Eccl. 12 : i. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

us in the days of our maturity. It is the bane of 
the age that thoughts and scenes of the world so 
quickly discolor and finally well nigh blot out the 
pure teachings of youthful days. The fault lies less 
with the child than with the parent. To remain 
intact, against all the crowding influences of the 
world, instruction by word and example must be 
straightforward and unfaltering. It is utterly use- 
less to spend three or four hours on Sunday instruct- 
ing our children to remember the Sabbath day to 
keep it holy if the next hour we desecrate it our- 
selves. That one act of ours will have more of an 
influence upon the child's life than the instruction 
of a whole afternoon. Xeither is it fruitful of 
good to instruct children concerning God and the 
Christ-life in a halting, half -critical, plainly doubt- 
ing sort of way. The world's lessons are delivered 
from the shoulder. They are planted with the 
force and positiveness of an armor-piercing shell. 
If Christian truth is to strike, if children are to 
remember their Creator in the days of their youth, 
lessons concerning him must be given with the same 
positiveness and force. Let the instructors do their 
work right and the results will be far more satis- 
factory to teacher, taught and God. 

Always keeping before the mind the memory of 
our Creator has a wonderful effect upon our lives. 
It is the same effect that is produced upon the 
statue by the sculptor always keeping his eye upon 
his model. The perfections of that model are sure 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

to be found in more or less degree in the statue 
thus molded. 

So faithful is memory that even when the eye is 
withdrawn from the model for a moment every 
line, every curve still stand before the mind in exact 
proportion. So true does this become in the case 
of the artist that we are not surprised to hear Dore 
tell us that "after driving through Windsor Park 
he could recall every tree he had passed and draw 
every shrub from memory." Once get the image 
of his Creator firmly fixed in the heart and mind 
of the child and memory, that truest servant of 
progress, will keep it there, ever urging her master 
to imitate the divine perfection. 

Nothing can be remembered that has never 
passed through the mind; hence, if the youth is to 
remember his Creator, a clear cut, positive, per- 
fectly drawn picture of this Creator must be given 
him by his instructors. This perfect picture of 
God comes to older minds from experience, from 
nature, from the inspired Word, from the life and 
teaching of Jesus Christ. When each has added 
its part the picture is ready to be transferred to 
others who cannot see so fully or so well. Small 
fears need be entertained for the children when 
parents and instructors give them true conceptions, 
by word and by example, of God and his law. 

No man or woman lives to-day who does not have 
large cause for remembering, with gratitude, past 
blessings and, with the vast majority of us, these 

123 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

have been so many as to make their coming re- 
semble a stream flowing from a never failing 
fountain. 

These memories assist progress in two ways. 
First, when, like Ariel, we remember "from what 
torment we have been freed" we are gladly willing 
to go on serving our Master so long as he can use 
us, and with every exertion, short of violence, we 
become more strong. The binding torture of cloven 
pine tree or imprisonment for twelve long winters 
in the knotty entrails of some giant oak are tor- 
tures light indeed compared with those from which 
many men have been released by God. The awful 
sense of flagrant sin from which so many have been 
freed surely puts them under lasting obligations to 
do God's will so long as he honors them with his 
directions. Lost souls in purgatory cannot be more 
wretched than the man awakened to a sense of his 
guilt in the sight of a righteous God. When, in 
the unrivaled exercise of his mercy, God makes pro- 
vision for his release, such a soul must ever profit 
from a memory of that from which he has been 
freed and be glad to serve his Saviour all his days. 

Others from an evil imagination, from an unruly 
temper, from bodily pain or weakness have been 
set free by the generous hand of the Father God and 
such release should make them willing servants of 
Immanuel. Unlike the labor of the slave which 
deforms and stultifies, work for God ennobles and 
makes strong. The meanest service "in his name" 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

adds bone and sinew to the spirit's life. Let him 
therefore who would progress remember past bless- 
ings and this in turn will lead to clear remembrance 
of him who gave them, whom to serve is in itself 
unrivaled blessing. 

The second part of this same benefit lies in the 
remembrance that this same God has other blessings 
in reserve and that, after the first great free favor 
of loving us when we were in rebellion, blessings 
have a strict relationship to the worthiness of the 
receiver. The more we make ourselves worthy of 
the blessings of God the more will he fully and 
gladly bestow. For Caliban, Prospero had only 
further punishments because of his unworthiness, 
while for Ariel, the dainty sprite that served him 
well, he had increasing commendation and final lib- 
erty. It is the duty of every man and an imperative 
necessity for everyone who would progress to 
make himself worthy of the smile of God. His 
physical being should be made strong and beautiful 
that it may be made meet for the indwelling of the 
Holy Spirit. His mental powers should be brought 
to the highest development possible to the man that 
he may be the better able to understand God's will 
as he has made it known in nature, experience and 
the written Word, while the soul of man which 
looks upon a kingdom unknown to eye or mind 
must, in the exercise of worship and meditation, 
draw near the great divine Example. 

It is to choice lives made more beautiful and 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

perfect by human effort that God delights to come 
and pour out such a blessing- that man is unable to 
contain it all. After years of struggle Paul found 
himself able to keep his body under, and imme- 
diately his great mind and soul strode forward in 
wisdom and experience until he became an intel- 
lectual and spiritual giant. George Miiller, the 
patriarch of Bristol, had in youth an almost uncon- 
trollable tendency to flagrant sin but, becoming con- 
vinced that God had a work for him to do, he 
began the long struggle of making himself a fitter 
servant, and no man of the last century was more 
blessed than he. If it is important to trust in God it 
is just as important to keep your powder dry! God 
blesses man's efforts to help himself. If you would 
become stronger than you are to-day make yourself 
more worthy of God's blessing, a work that is 
largely in your own hands, and he will gladly grant 
you larger and richer blessings, a work that is en- 
tirely in his hands. 

In his march toward success the average man 
will be largely benefited by remembering his parents 
and friends. He owes them so much that to forget 
them is to sear the emotions as with a hot iron and 
render them stiff and inactive. So important in the 
sight of God is the remembering with honor our 
parents, that it is the only commandment in the 
decalogue to which he attached a promise. The 
man who deliberately forgets or dishonors his 
parents has, as it were, let out a part of his life- 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

blood that gives him strength for his duties. He 
has cut loose from a part of his inheritance that is 
not less than capital stock with which he is to earn 
his livelihood. He has himself severed his branch 
from the vine and heart and soul decay is the only 
thing possible for him as he goes on through the 
world. 

Because of his myriad pressing duties as the chief 
executive of a great nation, the people would have 
excused President McKinley from making repeated 
journeys to the bedside of his sick mother, at least 
until the last hours had come, and he would have 
retained the same high place in their affections, but 
his great heart, seeking not the plaudits of a nation 
but loving that saintly mother with a true son's 
devotion, he, time after time, left his seat at Wash- 
ington — a place higher than any throne in the 
world — and hastened with the speed of the wind 
to be with her and give her some word of comfort 
and cheer during her last days on earth. Yes, in 
view of his position and its pressing duties, we 
would have excused him from making so many 
visits but, doing as he did, President McKinley ad- 
vanced himself in the estimation of the American 
people a hundredfold. Not only did he grant her 
an occasional visit but every single day during a 
long period of years that son sent some word to 
his loving mother. A letter, a message, some way, 
no matter how greatly pressed by affairs of state, 
this noble son sent some evidence of his love to 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

the one who bore him. Tell me not that when 
people become great they often do such things ! 
Only the people who do such things from the heart 
ever become great ! 

A full remembrance of parents, the great ser- 
vices they have done us, the sacrifices they have 
made for us, the love they bear us, keeps alive a 
fire in our souls that gives us power. Allow that 
fire to die down and man becomes more and more 
hardened, he ceases to remember wife, children, 
home, friends, and becomes a selfish, crabbed, hard- 
shelled egotist who is doomed to die in the confines 
of the very shell his faithless life has bound upon 
him. In their care for- the aged, for the fathers 
and mothers of the tribe, the American Indians fur- 
nish a worthy lesson. Even the poorest and lowest 
of the Chinese give the place of honor both at table 
and upon the resting benches to those advanced 
in age. 

The man with a warm heart toward those who 
bore him, who cared for him before he became able 
to care for himself, who love him more than they 
love their own selves, has a fire burning within that 
will keep him warm toward all mankind, and only 
those who have such a love does mankind urge 
to the front. 

You see then how large a part memory has in 
man's progress and as yet we have looked at but 
few instances. No stride forward but has its comple- 
ment in the past and the past is brought before us 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

by memory alone. It is as though man had a great 
treasury into which he could put his hand at pleasure 
and take out that which would help him forward. 
Memories of failures come to make us more careful 
in the future. Memories of sins drive us to 
righteousness, memories of blessings and of where 
they came from, memories of what other men by 
human effort have accomplished, memories of les- 
sons learned in the school of experience, memories 
of parents, memories of friends, all so much gold 
that will buy our passage on the railway called 
Industry to the city called Success. 

Come, then, take passage. Thousands are going 
and you should be among them. Lack of effort 
means lack of reward. By mere chance present 
inaction may yield present comfort, but present 
activity will yield riches and honor both present and 
future. Open the doors of ready memory and take 
out those thoughts, conceptions, imaginations, ex- 
periences that you have been all the years of your 
life gathering; lay them out before you. They will 
instantly become chart and compass, making plain 
the way into the days called future. Far better meet 
these days halfway by having something marked 
out for each one of them than be compelled to drag 
through their lonesome hours with nothing to do 
that makes for more strength and a higher place in 
the world. 

Take advantage of this heaven-born helper. She 
longs to serve thee and but waits thy call. Bid her 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

bring forth the richest pearls of her storehouse and, 
touched by the smile of God, let them light thy path- 
way into lands unknown. Each shore explored will 
increase your knowledge of the world we live in, 
each victory new will add its trophies to the sum 
until at last, allotted time expiring, enriched by 
service and made strong by love, thy Father, Maker, 
God, will call thee home. 



130 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Nine 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY THOUGHT AND MEDITATION 

In this workaday age, when rapid and unceas- 
ing action seems to be the only thing that will meet 
the demand, a slight seems to have been thrown 
upon the powers of thought and meditation as 
elements in man's progress. To the extent that this 
is true man is injuring himself. It was never in- 
tended that the body should supersede the mind, 
and the man who arbitrarily inverts the natural 
order is sure to lose heavily. 

Isaac Watts, the sweet singer of Christian hymns, 
translating the Lyrics of Horace, strikes firmly 
upon the truth when he sings : 

Were I so tall to reach the pole, 

Or grasp the ocean with my sp<m, 
I must be measured by my soul ; 

The mind's the standard of the man. 

Daniel Webster, at the laying of the corner stone 
of Bunker Hill Monument, standing in the midst of 
so much marble and bronze that must be handled 
by physical power, said in his notable address, 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

"Mind is the great lever of all things : human 
thought is the process by which human ends are 
ultimately answered." Ovid, in the early dawn of 
our larger knowledge, saw and said, "It is the 
mind that makes the man, and our vigor is in our 
immortal soul." 

As well try, by building bonfires, to make the 
night brighter than the day as to make the body of 
more value than the mind in the process of advance- 
ment. A man of three hundred pounds weight is as 
quickly forgotten as a man of one hundred pounds, 
but the man of three times the mental power is 
remembered long after his weaker brother has been 
forgotten. 

In our study of aids to human progress it is there- 
fore imperative that we give consideration to the 
powers of the mind called Thought and Meditation, 
for to neglect them would be to neglect steam and 
electricity that we might consider wind and horse 
power. 

Behold how like the mind is electricity. See that 
boat yonder filled with happy people riding the 
water like a swan. Not a sail to the wind, not an 
oar in the water, yet going swiftly and silently to its 
goal. How is it propelled? Electricity! 

Behold that great man going straight toward the 
goal called Success. No showy effects, no long list 
of counselors, no bolstering up by friends. How 
is he propelled ? Mind ! 

That was a profoundly significant retort made by 
132 



1 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

the great painter when asked by the youth what he 
mixed his paints with. "With brains, sir," said he, 
"with brains." Utensils, equipment, materials are 
nothing compared with the human brain that is 
behind them all. 

To think is to exercise the mind actively, espe- 
cially toward new ideas ; to meditate is to exercise 
the mind actively in the consideration of ideas 
already possessed. To think is to exercise the mind 
in a straight line, to meditate is to exercise the mind 
in a circle. 

Thought is the pioneer who discovers new terri- 
tory; meditation is the civilian who settles and en- 
riches it. Thought discovers new truth ; meditation 
enlarges, classifies and labels this truth to make it 
of value to the life. Both are necessary to perma- 
nent progress, either religious or material. Let us 
fortify the position, first with reference to the neces- 
sity of thought. 

I. You desire to occupy new territory which for 
convenience we may call "Success." This deter- 
mined upon, you are led to see that action is neces- 
sary. What will you do? Will you first rush in 
yourself, all unprepared and unfamiliar with con- 
ditions that you will find there, or will you send 
ahead some trusty agent who shall explore the new 
territory, discover its boundaries, its productiveness, 
discovering what will be required of you when you 
come ? 

Moses, the leader of Israel, believed this to be the 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

best plan and so sent spies to the land of Canaan. 
They were to work quietly, studying both the land 
and its people; the crops, the water supply, the 
places of danger and the places of safety. They 
were to study the food supply, the roadways, the 
defenses of the walled cities. When all had been 
discovered they returned and laid before the great 
leader a mass of facts that instantly familiarized 
him with the new country and effected his whole 
plan of campaign. 

Eighty years ago our fathers in Pennsylvania and 
Ohio thought this the best plan and sent agents into 
Illinois and Iowa to discover what manner of states 
they were. When the forerunners returned telling 
of timberland and rolling prairies, of abundant 
moisture and favorable climatic conditions, they 
soon went on themselves fully equipped and pre- 
pared to occupy the new country, bring it into sub- 
jection and force it to yield them both sustenance 
and fortune. So every wise man desiring to occupy 
the territory called "Success" will send forth a 
trusty agent to explore the land and come and 
report to him conditions. 

Of all possible agents, Thought is the most effi- 
cient. High walls and iron gates are no impediment 
to his going. Into every city we wish to occupy he 
goes and explores. He enters the city called art 
and comes back to tell man if he would occupy 
that city he must have a trained eye and nimble 
fingers and a perfect knowledge of form and color. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

He enters the city called letters and returns to in- 
form man that if he would take that city he must 
have a ready mind and a tireless eye, a sympathy 
for historic fact, for rime and meter. He enters 
the city called science and returns to inform his 
master that to occupy that city he must have the 
eye of the microscope and the telescope; that he 
must be able to break open rocks and read history 
that was written by God centuries before the present 
age; must be able to hear sounds that were uttered 
before the voices of that heavenly host sang peace 
on earth good will to men ; must be able, from frag- 
ment of bone or footprint in the clay, to reconstruct 
the whole body of giant whale or mammoth. Ap- 
prised of these requirements, man is doubly wise 
and now sets about preparing himself for the larger 
activities upon which he is to enter. 

Just as a general who has sent spies into the terri- 
tory he determines to capture has the advantage of 
the one who has not, so the man who has sent for- 
ward his thoughts into the new realms he wishes to 
occupy has the advantage over his less active 
neighbor. 

This being true, it follows that the thinker must 
ever be the man of power. One man who wishes 
to move a stove weighing one thousand pounds, 
knowing thac it is too heavy for him to move alone, 
goes for four neighbors to help him. Another man 
has a stove of similar weight to move. He, too, 
feels that he cannot move it alone, but he stops and 

135 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

thinks. In a moment we see him approaching with 
fulcrum and lever and the next moment the stove 
is moved! For all practical purposes such a man 
is five times as powerful as his thoughtless brother. 

To the man who thinks, the future becomes real 
weeks and months before the actual day approaches. 
To his keen mind there appears a picture of condi- 
tions on that future day very much like what the 
reality will prove to be. He weighs influences that 
will have a bearing, takes every known element into 
consideration, and then he does a wiser thing yet; 
he allows a certain amount for unknown elements — 
something for the unusual, and the result is he is 
seldom surprised and meets each oncoming day as 
an old friend. 

A tourist stood one day at the entrance to the 
Cave of the Winds on Williams Mountain in 
Colorado. He had heard of the cave many times. 
Through stones and earth and every obstruction he 
pushed his mind until there stretched out before him 
long avenues, deep gorges, high domes, glistening 
stalactites. When he went in, it was to say, Surely I 
have been here before. These avenues and arches, 
these glistening domes and sounding caves seem like 
old friends. 

So it will ever be with the man who thinks. He 
will rarely be taken unawares. Forewarned by 
careful thought, he is fully armed. The man who 
has sent his servant called Thought into the new 
fields he wishes to occupy has time and opportunity 

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.PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

to prepare for their requirements and so goes to 
them as their master and not as their slave. 

My appeal, then, to all who read these words is, 
think! think! think! Do you wish to become wiser? 
think ! Would you be stronger ? think ! Would 
you become a better Christian? think! Think not 
alone on the problems of daily life : think on the 
deep things of God and the measureless possibilities 
of the human soul. Think not only of man's need; 
think more of God's abundant provision. All life 
will grow sweeter and richer. 

II. The work of the pioneer would be of little 
value if it were not followed at once by the settler. 
New thought must be re-thought many times before 
it shall attain its maximum value. The first thought 
is the rough proof of the manuscript which must be 
gone over and corrected — perhaps supplanted en- 
tirely — before the article is ready for the press. 

But without the first thought there will be no 
second thought, hence thought must ever precede 
meditation. Thought brings advancement in rela- 
tive position; meditation brings solidity and cer- 
tainty. If to think at all is valuable, to think much 
is priceless. 

Meditation is a council called to consider weighty 
problems. All the powers of the mind are sum- 
moned : Conception, Memory, Imagination. 

Conception lays hold upon and makes to the 
council a plain statement of the case. Memory then 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

speaks out and introduces expert testimony as to 
what has been the experiences of the past with rela- 
tion to the problem in hand. Imagination lays a 
number of alternative possibilities before the mind, 
some of which must be at once guarded against and 
some must be striven for until at last, when the coun- 
cil adjourns, the mind has the problem in all its 
phases well in hand. 

Meditation is a meeting of the Cabinet. The 
Secretary of War suggests fighting the matter out. 
The Secretary of the Interior urges peace. The 
Secretary of Agriculture suggests that a few experi- 
ments be made. The Secretary of State urges arbi- 
tration. The President puts all these suggestions 
in his mind and weighs them — for he is a fair man 
and wishes to do that w T hich is right — and after 
many days he issues a proclamation full of wisdom 
and welcomed by all concerned. 

Meditation is a consultation of physicians. Dr. 
Conception gives his diagnosis of the case. Dr. 
Memory, who knows the patient well, recalls similar 
attacks in the past and the remedies used for his 
restoration. Dr. Imagination suggests awful possi- 
bilities if help is not secured at once and dares to 
speak of the probable effect of certain drugs. The 
patient has the benefit of the experience and pre- 
scriptions of all these experts. 

Meditation takes the facts that have been brought 
before the mind by all her faculties, thought, con- 
ception, imagination, memory, and makes them meet 

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each other in friendly combat. Each contribution 
will have its full value. Thought is cast in over 
against imagination; memory challenges the new 
conception and makes her prove her right to a place. 
Back and forth the conflict wages, each contribu- 
tion being challenged in turn by every other until 
that which has a right to stay emerges a victor and 
all else is driven from the mental arena. 

Meditation is a process of selection. The mind 
is a lover of flowers going into a wonderful garden. 
There are blossoms of every hue and some exhale 
the fragrance of violets and the essence of roses. 
What would the gardener do to-day, charm a child 
or thrill a maid or calm a mother? Having deter- 
mined upon his purpose and weighed the contribut- 
ing value of every petal the selection is made that 
perfectly meets the call. 

Meditation makes a wise man; it makes a man 
sure of his ground to the point of defending it and 
dying for it if necessary. Both are badly needed, 
but from myriad evidences there is greater neglect 
of meditation than of thought in the modern world. 
It is evidenced by the number of wrecks one sees 
upon the shores of time. Theirs are the bleaching 
bones of pioneers. They had just enough thought 
to start them out, but not enough to count the cost 
or consider the consequences or to be able to bear up 
when trials came. Men sometimes see more by 
looking into a well than by looking into the sky. 
The bent head of the man wrapt in meditation is 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

one of the permanent improvements to any city. 
More than its paved streets, its playing fountains, 
its marble temples, do these men give a city wealth. 
One head bent for an hour in earnest meditation has 
many times in past years done more for the advance- 
ment of the race than armies of men and years of 
time. 

The thoughtless man looking into a laboratory, 
seeing the master in his chair, his head buried in his 
hands, asks gruffly why is this man not at work earn- 
his share of bread and meat. He is not less than a 
society parasite. In a moment some Edison raises 
his head, takes pencil and paper and draws a diagram 
showing how streets and homes may be turned from 
darkness into day by the use of electricity. 

Let us frankly confess that to active thought and 
earnest meditation we are indebted for the thousand 
conveniences and blessings of present-day life. "I 
will think about it" honestly said and faithfully fol- 
lowed is one of man's most valuable utterances. It 
often supplies the lack of family inheritance or rich 
dowry. It lifts a man from an object of charity to 
independence and plenty. 

Be admonished therefore to turn the rectifying 
power of careful meditation upon all the activities 
of your life : your efforts to advance, your loves, 
your hates, your jealousies, your refusals to help 
upbuild righteousness, your efforts to help mankind. 
They will all be vastly benefited. You will leave 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

them all richer, more true, more in harmony with 
perfection than they have ever been before. 

Thought and Meditation. Two trusty, ready 
servants. It costs you nothing but time to use them ; 
they may provide you both fortune and everlasting 
life. "Think on these things." 

Think on the deeper problems of life and of the 
hereafter. The squirrel and the ant and the bee 
make provision against the need of an oncoming 
winter. Will the child of God show less wisdom 
than these humble creatures ? We know the time of 
need is coming: that life on earth will not go on 
forever, and we are very sure that in some very 
definite way the life we are living here is to effect 
the life we are to live hereafter. How can we 
prepare? "Think on these things." 

Think — not to make yourself sad, but to make 
yourself wise; to lead you to make such prepara- 
tion against the future as shall insure the soul 
eternal felicity. The life that once gets the true 
conception of Christianity and its possible returns 
to the soul w r ill go on as far as the mind will carry 
it toward the infinite God and then, in the light of 
sure revelation, will take the short leap of faith that 
will land him on the threshold of the Father's house. 
Let us obey the apostle's injunction and earnestly 
and devoutly "think on these things." 



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Chapter Ten 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 

BY PERSEVERANCE, EXPERIENCE, 

CAUTION, HOPE 

Every man has a well-defined aversion to being 
last in the race. This aversion to being behind 
urges men to effort no less than the hope for success. 
But in spite of all, the class called Mediocre is 
crowded while the class called Great is begging con- 
tinually for acquisitions. It is due not so much to 
the impossibility of many of the middle class taking 
a place in the higher, but because they have paused 
in the midst of their efforts and given up the 
struggle. 

"Men begin life," says Dr. Hillis in "Aspiratons 
and Ideals, " "with the high purpose of living nobly, 
generously, openly. Full of the choicest aspirations, 
hungering for the highest things, the youth enters 
triumphantly upon the pathway of life. But jour- 
neying forward he meets conflict and strife, envy 
and jealousy, disappointment and defeat. He finds 
it hard to live up to the level of his best moods. 
Self-interest biases his judgment. Greed bribes his 
reason. Pride leads him astray. Selfishness tempts 

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him to violate his finer self. Persuading himself that 
the ideal life is impracticable, he strikes an average 
between his higher moods and his low flying hours. 
Then is the luster of life all dimmed." Instead 
of going on and winning a golden crown, he pauses 
and accepts instead a crown of reeds. 

Responsibility for success rests to-day, as never 
before, on the individual life. All the world loves a 
struggler. To win such a character and such a place 
in the church as that held by Sheldon Jackson, let 
us say, means that all the helpful elements that go 
to make up life have been called into sendee and 
persistently and carefully used through a long period 
of years The day came when the humble home 
missionary was called to the highest office in the gift 
of his denomination. He did not seek it, but his 
associates thrust the honor upon him as a partial 
recognition of what he had done for his Master and 
his church. Doing these things for others he won 
a signal success for himself. 

Paul's admonition is always timely, "So run ; that 
ye may attain." Many run part way in the race 
and stop. They never win the laurel. Others run 
all the way, but poorly. All run, but one wins. So 
run that ye may win. 

On the cinder path of life the element that con- 
tributes a lion's share to victory is perseverance. An 
observer stood one day at the dock of the Pennsyl- 
vania Coal Company in Chicago. A huge lake 
steamer had rete*itly been moored by its side. In 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

the hold of the ship rested twenty-nine hundred tons 
of hard coal. This must be transferred to the bins 
above. It seemed an endless and well-nigh impos- 
sible task to the inexperienced onlooker. But as the 
beholder stood there, from three different points 
there shot down into the mysterious depths of that 
ship curious shaped buckets, and as they came 
again swiftly from the vessel's hold, each one carried 
half a ton of her cargo. Quietly, constantly, unceas- 
ingly those little buckets sped back and forth on their 
work, each trip adding to the coal in the bin, each 
trip taking from that in the boat. 

It was the principle of perseverance worked out 
in practical life. To the man or woman who desires 
success no principle is- more important. Milton, 
fired with the desire to write a great poem the world 
would not soon forget, but realizing his unfitness for 
the task, went to his books and for seven long years 
toiled, adding little by little, day by day, the learning 
that would give him power, and then not until an 
eventful life had been lived, until blindness had 
driven his thoughts in upon himself and upward 
toward God, did the now ripe and ready scholar 
begin his noble work. Fifty years of hidden, quiet 
work of preparation, but it yielded a pyramid of 
worth, an eternity of fame! 

Let us lay down the principle, then, that while 
success is possible to every one of us, it is possible 
to no one who neglects months and years of perse- 
vering work both of preparation and accomplish- 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

ment. The best advice to youth is : hold only the 
loftiest aspirations and the highest ideals. These 
alone are worthy the choice of God-made men. 
Better start to build a palace and produce a villa 
than to look no higher than a villa and end by build- 
ing a hovel. You will never go beyond your aspira- 
tions. They mark the utmost limit of your advance. 
Therefore set them high. The artist who aspires to 
equal a certain master must ever remain second to 
him, for the master's name was first upon men's lips. 
It is only he who determines to go beyond what 
other men have accomplished that stands out a 
marked character among men. 

Having once determined what you will accom- 
plish, with God's approval, work as you never yet 
have dreamed you could work to reach your ideal. 
Work not for the approval of men, but for the 
approval of your own soul. Work during the golden 
hours of the morning, when each new day has arisen 
refreshed from the embrace of night; work when 
the dayspring has reached his zenith and, pouring 
down his beams of light and life, endeavors to 
bring more life and wealth into the world; work 
in the cool of the evening when the burning eye of 
Titan has been closed by earth's swift turning; work 
in the quiet hours of the night when, undisturbed, 
you may commune with the best source of thought 
and experience. The familiar saying of the poet is 
ever new : 



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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Heights by great men gained and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight; 

But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night. 

You know well what you ought to do, what you 
wish to attain. Never stop trying to win all you 
aspire toward, especially in those things that bear 
on character and achievement in behalf of others. 
Oftentimes the very fact that one keeps on working 
even against opposition and is ready to take full 
advantage of every chance benefit is the largest 
factor in success. The fable of the hare and the 
snail is not to be despised, for it carries in its heart 
an immortal truth. 

Perseverance in preparation is the first rule in 
progress. Fortune smiles only upon those who have 
smiled upon her. Only the man who is prepared for 
it is called to take the high position, to assume the 
larger responsibility. Restricted by no caste and 
with the wealth of all the ages as an inheritance, 
each youth and maiden of America may go on and 
up until the highest and best has been attained. 

Valuable and necessary as is the element called 
Perseverance, let no one think that it alone will 
yield the fruits desired. It must be upheld and 
aided by many friends. No matter how vigorously 
the blind man might walk, if he had not some one 
to guide him past obstruction and excavation he 
would never reach the distant goal. Even so must 
Perseverance walk in the light shed by Experience. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

From behind like a great sun doth experience shed 
her rays upon the true man's pathway, and if he be 
wise it will be of a twofold power. 

The first will be lent by the experience of others, 
which, upon solicitation they have given or by obser- 
vation has been discovered. It is a strong arm on 
which the wise man will lean during his journey 
through life. Oftentimes the youth fails to make 
use of the most valuable part of his inheritance by 
rejecting the counsel of a parent that is based upon 
long years of experience. One's reverence for silver 
heads should become greater every day. What 
years they have spent! What obstacles have been 
overcome! What victories have been won! We 
need to know of them. From every life one touches, 
be it humble or great, he can gain somewhat that 
will help him in his struggle toward success. 

Upon every struggling youth, therefore, one urges 
the value of the experience of others. If your 
father has learned by a life of experience that perse- 
verance is necessary to success, you can start where 
he leaves off and your chances for success become 
one hundred per cent higher than his. If past 
ages have taught men that honesty, both in business 
and in social relations, is necessary, base your life 
upon this wholesome principle. Never strike out 
in defiance of what all men have proved to be an 
unchanging law. It is hard to row against a rapid 
current, but with it distance is quickly annihilated. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

My son, hear the instruction of thy father, 
And forsake not the law of thy mother : 
For they shall be a chaplet of grace unto thy head, 
And chains about thy neck. Prov. 1 : 8, 9. 

The second light shed upon the wise man's path 
by experience will be that of his own. Not less 
valuable than the wisdom others have gained is that 
we gain ourselves. The burned child shuns the fire, 
but all too often the youth punished by the blighting 
nature of vice flies into it again as quickly as re- 
lieved from its first effects, only to be more severely 
rebuked. A visitor to one of the large industries 
of America, a few months ago, talked with the 
superintendent of the iron department. At one of 
the forges worked a man of middle age who gave 
evidence at a glance that he was an expert. In 
response to the visitor's questioning eyes, the super- 
intendent replied : "He need not be there. That man 
was at the head of the iron department in the con- 
struction of buildings at the World's Fair. He is a 
genius in his line/' "Then why is he there?" 
"Whisky" was the terse reply. "It will kill the 
best of them." 

How amazing it is that so many lives go on doing 
the things their own experience has told them are 
destructive of their own best interests and that will 
positively prevent them from ever winning a notable 
victory ! How many are going on in a futile effort 
to overthrow laws that have been in operation since 
the world began ! 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

With open and attentive gaze, therefore, review 
the past. Note every lesson that has been learned 
and bring its fruits to your service in your present 
struggle. It may be the one thing needed to yield 
you victory. If it is the part of wisdom to move 
forward, it is no less the part of wisdom to go in 
the strength that past years have given you. Better 
a foot along a safe path than a mile along one that 
may land you in failure. Call, then, upon the past 
and in her pure light pursue your way. New views 
will open before you, new conquests appear for 
heart and brain. Plant your feet firmly upon the 
path others and yourself have proved safe. You 
may then move forward with confidence. 

"If you wish success," says one, "make Caution 
your elder brother." Caution is the ballast in the 
hold of life's ship. It is the shield we carry even 
when no arrows are seen to be flying. Caution is 
the coat of mail unseen by the world yet protecting 
its wearer from attack of blade or missile. It is the 
element, undefined by yourself, that leads you when 
possible to make your journeys by land instead of 
by sea, or if by sea to take the vessels known to be 
the safest and best. 

To the youth on the road toward success it is an 
invaluable aid. Dangers and temptations infest the 
path of youth as reptiles the jungle, and it is only 
by the exercise of extreme caution that he is enabled 
to escape unharmed. Even the briefest delay cuts 
off from the amount to be achieved and the moments 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

your achievement may be enjoyed, while the great 
clanger is that, having once touched the life, they 
will stop all progress and success will never be 
attained. 

The words of the mill superintendent ring in 
one's ears, "It will kill the best of them." There- 
fore let the compass called Caution be aboard every 
craft and may it be consulted every day during 
your journey through life. The mariner who would 
disregard his compass would expect loss or wreck 
and would be condemned by the world. No less will 
the youth who disregards life's compass, who 
neglects to post Caution at the wheel, suffer loss and 
shipwreck whether in the things of the body or in 
the things of the soul. 

But above the compass there is a star toward 
which its needle points. To the mariner it is the 
star of the North. To the sailor on life's sea it is 
the star of hope. 

A sailor of small experience once found himself 
on a yard arm being rapidly raised to great heights 
among the vessel's rigging. His eyes riveted upon 
the ship and the waters below, his head began to 
swim and he gave evidence of losing his hold. See- 
ing his dangerous state and knowing at once the 
reason, the captain shouted, "Look aloft, my lad, 
look aloft!" Raising his eyes from the fast reced- 
ing decks and scenes that changed, his eyes rested 
upon the calm, unchanging heavens and immediately 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

all looked natural and the dizziness gave place to 
calm assurance. 

In our journey toward what we please to call life- 
success there must be a permanent, unchanging 
element toward which we can cast our eyes in 
moments of defeat and distress, and in all the 
world there is not a better than that which the 
Father has provided and which men call Hope. 
Hope never faileth, but as the changeless hills re- 
mains one solid point on which our eyes may rest. 

As a strong raft will fulsome hope bear up when 
life's storms break upon you. In the distress born 
of the possibility of death in a watery grave, pas- 
sengers on a storm-driven vessel often cast over- 
board everything that they have hitherto held dear : 
goods, wealth, family heirlooms, everything that 
adds an ounce to the burden of the stricken vessel. 
When times of defeat and distress come upon you 
and you are led to cast away things hitherto held 
dear never let hope go. She is no burden, but 
rather a buoy to your floundering ship of life. Cherish 
her as you do your own life and she will reward 
you a hundredfold. Obey the confident Psalmist 
in the words he spoke to his own fainting heart: 

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? 
And why art thou disquieted within me? 
Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him 
For the help of his countenance. 

Toward what goal may the right-living man or 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

woman strive to make progress? Shall it be for 
success in material fortune? It has many dangers 
and few chances of ever being won. Shall it be for 
earthly fame? You will be led to do men some 
service in gaining it and this is good, but the enter- 
prise is full of danger to your own soul. Shall it be 
toward self -gratification? It is an ignoble end and 
unworthy a man of strength. 

There is a success above all these and yet it in- 
cludes every element of worth found in all of them: 
Being a successful man in the sight of God. Strive 
now for riches, strive now for culture, strive now 
for fame, strive now to enrich yourself, but use all 
to add glory to God and lighten the burdens of men. 
Successful in his sight let all the unworthy stand- 
ards of self-seeking men be despised and, moving 
onward and upward, approach the divine ideal given 
us in the earthly life of our Saviour, Redeemer and 
untiring Friend — Jesus Christ. 



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Chapter Eleven 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY RESISTING TEMPTATION 

In the opening verses of the general Epistle of 
James there is this strange and startling admonition, 
"Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into 
manifold temptations." Nothing could be further 
from other New Testament teaching concerning this 
danger, which we are admonished to avoid and to 
pray that we may escape. Reading further, in the 
hope of catching some explanation of the unusual 
advice, we find : "Knowing that the proving of 
your faith worketh patience. And let patience have 
its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, 
lacking in nothing." 

We catch the secret in this further reading. James 
does not diverge so far from the spirit of New Tes- 
tament teachings as at first appears. He is writing 
to Christians who are widely scattered among hostile 
people. Undoubtedly he has heard of persecutions ; 
of temptations to abandon the new faith and return 
to idolatry or to fly into a rage and revenge them- 
selves upon their persecutors. Neither would be 
Christlike. In an effort to cheer and encourage 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

them, the apostle urges them to turn these tempt- 
ings into generators of more power and faith. "If 
you are tempted and endure," he says, "you have 
reason to rejoice in the temptation, for it not only 
gave you an opportunity to display your faith but 
it also gave you the struggle that develops more 
faith. It develops patience also, and when this has 
reached perfection you will be an acceptable follower 
of Jesus, wanting nothing." 

From this somewhat restricted treatment of temp- 
tation I should like to move out to a broader treat- 
ment which will include temptation to personal sins 
as well as to forsake one's religion and turn again 
to paganism. In this broader sense temptation is 
universal. From the first transgression in Eden 
down to the latest infraction of God's laws both 
men and women have been wont to say, "The ser- 
pent beguiled me, and I did eat." The apostle James 
insists that we shall not charge the temptation upon 
God. "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am 
tempted of God ; for God cannot be tempted with evil, 
and he himself tempteth no man." God may leave 
people to the temptations of Satan once in a while 
that they may be tested, proved, to discover whether 
they are strong enough to resist Satan's appeals and 
are worthy of the confidence of Jehovah, but God 
is never the author of the temptation itself nor does 
he cooperate with Satan in bringing it about. Satan 
is always watching, hoping to catch some Christian 
when he is weak and draw him into his net. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Fully half of our temptations come from the out- 
side. Here the tempter works through other people. 
Some unscrupulous companion who wants our time 
or our money or our strength tempts us to deviate 
from the path of rectitude and eat, drink or act in 
a way to debase our manhood. 

A few years ago I was visiting the Brooklyn 
Navy Yard when one of our splendid men-of-war 
came home from a long cruise. The sailors had 
several months' pay in their pockets, and already 
abnormal appetites were crying out to be satisfied. 
As the boys poured out of the yard they were met 
by a company of "cappers," almost as large, that 
literally laid hold upon them and pulled and dragged 
them into saloons and disreputable houses that lined 
the street. They were promised all they wanted for 
nothing, but I was told by Y. M. C. A. workers 
near by that few of them would have a cent in their 
pockets when they at length emerged. Sometimes 
the debauch lasted for days, until body and soul 
were smirched and the poor boys were literally 
kicked into the street because they had no more 
money. The generous gifts of Helen Gould have 
helped conditions there somewhat, but our govern- 
ment would honor herself if she would provide pro- 
tection for the soldiers and sailors everywhere from 
these harpies that would suck their very life's blood. 

Our temptations will not perhaps be so severe nor 
to such flagrant sins, but they are none the less real 
and insistent. Modern society invites both young 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

men and women to drink and smoke and gamble 
and to make many other infractions of the law of 
rectitude that, however simple they are in the begin- 
ning, often lead to weakness and disgrace. Older 
men and women are tempted to adopt questionable 
business methods or to countenance social practices 
that both weaken and degrade if they do not at last 
bring them into disgrace. 

In addition to these fierce temptations from with- 
out there are. temptations from within that are quite 
as severe. Here Satan works through our normal 
appetites and desires. Many a youth who would 
scorn to yield to such outside temptations as I have 
just referred to falls an easy victim to temptations 
from within his own life to which he thinks he can 
yield and the world will never know it. These will 
include both thoughts and actions and their injury 
to the moral nature is as great as that of open sins. 

Neither are these inner temptations from God. 
The apostle whose teaching we are following in this 
study says further: "Each man is tempted, when 
he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. 
Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: 
and the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth 
death." 

In an able exposition of this passage the Rev. C. 
Jerdan says : 

Lust may be said to "conceive" when it obtains the consent 
of the will or disarms its opposition. The man who dallies 
with temptation, instead of meeting it with instant and 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

prayerful resistance, will be sure eventually to succumb to it. 
From the guilty union of lust with the will a living sin is 
born. The embryo corruption becomes developed into a deed 
of positive transgression. And this is not all. Sin, the 
progeny of lust, itself grows up from the infancy of mere 
choice to the adult life of settled habit, and "when it is full- 
grown it in turn becomes, as the result of union with the 
will, the mother of death. It was so with the sin of our first 
parents in Paradise. It was so with the sin of Achan. He 
saw, coveted, took and died. It is so with the sin of licentious- 
ness, which has suggested the figure of this passage ; the 
physical corruption which the practice of sensuality entails 
is just a sacrament of spiritual death. Death is the fruit of 
all sin. Sin kills peace ; it kills hope ; it kills usefulness ; it 
kills the conscience; it kills the soul. The harlot-house of 
lust and sin becomes the vestibule of perdition. As Milton 
has it in a well-known passage of "Paradise Lost" — a passage 
suggested by this very verse — Sin is : 

"The snaky sorceress that sat 
Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal key"; 
while Death, her son, is "the grizzly Terror" on the other 
side, which stood 

"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell." 

In an agony of despair we are disposed to cry out 
with Paul, "Wretched man that I am! who shall 
deliver me out of the body of this death?" But 
wait a moment. Severe as these temptations are 
man does not have to yield to them. In his first 
letter to the Corinthians Paul says, "There hath no 
temptation taken you but such as man can bear : 
but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be 
tempted above that ye are able; but will with the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

temptation make also the way of escape, that ye 
may be able to endure it." 

You could have withstood any temptation that 
ever came upon you, even the most severe, if you 
had wanted to. Aided by God, man's will is sover- 
eign and nothing takes place in the life to which 
the will does not first give its consent. While God 
does not prevent Satan from tempting you he does 
make a way of escape if you want it. Indeed, you 
can turn your temptations into sources of power if 
you will. This is the contention of the apostle James. 
Since temptations are sure to come into our lives 
we had best try to discover his secret. 

Temptations to impurity may be so met as to 
make the tempted one more pure and more sure of 
remaining pure. The life that has never been tried 
may be innocent, but it has not developed strength 
and therefore is in danger of being overcome and 
crushed. Many a young woman has gone from the 
security of a country home into a great city assum- 
ing that everyone was as pure as herself, only to 
find herself ensnared by lustful tempters who preyed 
upon her innocence. She was pure, but she was not 
strong. She accepted false promises or gave her 
love to a traitor and her life was soon crushed in 
the awful stress. 

Or take the more striking case of the temptations 
of our Lord. He was in all points tempted like as 
we are. Why? We may get some light on the 
question by studying God's treatment of Israel in 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

the day of their removal to the promised land. He 
had a great work for Israel to do. He wished them 
to be a receptacle for future revelations ; he wanted 
to prove to surrounding nations that man could 
withstand temptations to lewdness and idolatry and 
live on the high plain of purity and truth. He had 
protected them before while they were in bondage. 
Now that they were to be an independent nation, 
standing for Jehovah, they must develop power of 
their own. Therefore we are told in the book of 
Judges that instead of driving out all the idolatrous 
tribes from the promised land he allowed some of 
them to remain, not that his people might be weak- 
ened but that they might make themselves more 
strong by resisting temptations. Jehovah said, 
"I also will not henceforth drive out any from 
before them of the nations that Joshua left when 
he died ; that by them I may prove Israel, whether 
they will keep the way of Jehovah to walk therein, 
as their fathers did keep it, or not.' , 

When Cromwell was in a tight place in battle he 
wanted near him his Ironsides ; when Napoleon was 
in danger he wanted to have near him the Old 
Guard. Other soldiers weighed as much and were 
as fully equipped with weapons, but these old 
heroes were battle tested. No danger could daunt 
them ; no startling situation cause them to turn and 
flee. They could be trusted. Therefore they were 
valuable. 

The manhood of Jesus was very high, but it might 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

have fallen. Did he have the strength and courage 
to go through the awful temptations to desert his 
Father and save his own life that were to come 
upon him? No one knew. It could only be proved 
by trying him, and so he was given over to Satan for 
a season. 

First he was tempted to use his divine power to 
meet his own physical needs, "Command that these 
stones become bread." If he had yielded here 
he might have used his divine power and saved him- 
self from death on the cross, thus nullifying the 
whole plan of redemption. Next he was tempted to 
attract attention and win public acclaim by bizarre 
methods : "Cast thyself down from this wing of the 
temple into the well-filled court below. Thousands 
will see it and at once concede that you must be the 
Son of God. This will simply be a short cut to 
what you hope to gain by a long and circuitous 
route." It was a more reasonable temptation since 
"the king's business requires haste," but had Jesus 
yielded he would have failed in his mission, for it 
required every day of the three years he labored to 
prove by example that a man can live the prim 
ciples he taught. Failing in these two temptations, 
Satan made a more direct attack. "Forsake God 
entirely. Worship me ; join your powers with mine 
and I will give you all the kingdoms of the world." 
This was the fiercest temptation of all and the most 
necessary from the standpoint of God. If in his 
human nature Jesus was ever going to turn away 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

from God the sooner he did it the better. Before 
his work could proceed God must know. 

Therefore the temptations of Jesus were a great 
blessing. He went into them an untried youth; 
he came out of them a battle-proved, triumphant 
veteran, ready now to pursue the greatest work ever 
undertaken by any man. He had denied the flesh 
and crucified his desires, but he had proved the truth 
of the contention later uttered by Tennyson: 

That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things. 

In the city of Chicago a few years ago a banking 
firm was testing a young man of great promise. 
He was quick and keen and seemed to have a natural 
talent for the banking business. They wanted to 
advance him to higher positions, but he was almost 
a stranger and some of the officers had grave doubts 
of his honesty. 

He was paying teller at the time and worked in a 
steel cage all alone, but for one hour every day the 
cashier took his place while he went out to luncheon. 
During one of these absences the cashier slipped a 
ten-dollar gold piece into his cash. It was one 
method of testing him. If he reported an over that 
night, well and good. If he said nothing they would 
know he had pocketed the extra coin. 

As closing time came those in the secret were 
nervous. He worked like lightning, and was always 
ready with his balance long before all other depart- 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

ments. But this evening there was a delay. The 
cashier saw that he was slowly and carefully going 
over the day's business a second time. Then he 
checked it over a third time. Passing his cage the 
cashier called out casually, "Anything wrong, Mr. 
Young?" "Everything checks perfectly/' he said 
in a worried tone, "but I'm ten dollars over in my 
cash." Not a word was said, but the officers put 
that down to his credit as an honest man. 

Not long after this they subjected him to another 
test. A plain-clothes detective presented a check for 
seventy-five dollars at his window and asked for 
the cash. It was signed by a firm that had a large 
balance at the bank and that issued many checks of 
similar amount. Everything looked all right but, 
while the man who presented it claimed acquaint- 
ance, the teller did not know him. When payment 
was refused, the detective came close and said 
quietly: "Of course you have to be careful, Boss, 
but that check is absolutely good. I travel for this 
firm and am on my way to take a train that leaves 
in thirty minutes. I must have some cash. Give 
me seventy dollars and keep five dollars for your- 
self." It looked like easy money, but the teller re- 
fused ; the customer would have to be identified. 

Temptations gave this young man the chance both 
to develop resistance and to prove himself to others. 
He was soon promoted to the cashiership while the 
cashier went on to the presidency. 

From these various examples and experiences it 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

may be seen that temptation may be an allurement 
to entice us to sin. It is thus we usually conceive 
of it. But it may be a test to prove us or a discipline 
to improve and strengthen us. Assuming that the 
Christian is going to take the right attitude toward 
temptation, the apostle we are following therefore 
cries out: "Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye 
fall into manifold temptations. They will give you 
a chance to prove the strength of your faith; they 
will give you a chance to strengthen yourself, for 
every victory won makes the warrior stronger. Use 
your temptations as opportunities to glorify God by 
revealing to the world the strength of his followers." 

If anyone should still ask the question, "Why 
does God permit temptation?" the answer could be 
given in the words of James, "That ye may be 
perfect and entire, lacking in nothing." And again, 
"Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for 
when he hath been approved, he shall receive the 
crown of life." God longs for a strong and sufficient 
manhood. It is not easy to develop a character that 
will honor God in life and win eternal happiness at 
the bar of heavenly judgment. 

Two boys started life together in a western vil- 
lage. Each inherited a modest fortune and entered 
upon life with the brightest prospects. The lure of 
the world sounded in the ear of each. An oppor- 
tunity to invest their money in an enterprise of ques- 
tionable character but large returns came to both. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

They could work together. They would be rich 
enough to retire in ten years. 

The younger man urged his friend to invest. He 
argued that the business, while questioned by a 
certain portion of society, was recognized by law; 
that somebody would carry it on, and why not they ? 
They would be careful to avoid its degrading and 
debasing associations and, as soon as they could 
do so with a competence, would sell out and come 
back home. But the older youth hesitated. The temp- 
tation was strong, but there was a latent sense of 
decency in him that made him hold back. Forced 
"You may think this is prudish in me but I cannot 
by his friend to show his hand, he said at length: 
bring myself to get rich at the cost of other men's 
welfare. It would be fine to have plenty of money 
but I want something else, worse. I want to be 
able to respect myself and I want the respect of 
other men." 

As he expected, his friend laughed at him. He 
reminded him that the respect of other men paid 
no bills and that it was foolish to allow a tender 
conscience to interfere with a good business oppor- 
tunity. But if he was fixed in his determination 
they would have to separate. He was going in, and 
he would soon show his friend how foolish he had 
been. They parted in sorrow and the older youth 
went back to his land. 

Fifteen years rolled by before the two men met 
again. The avaricious youth had made his for- 

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; 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

tune. The man with a conscience had enough and 
to spare. The brewer was fat, blear-eyed and 
dull-witted. The farmer was lithe, clear-eyed and 
keen. The brewer loathed himself. His wife and 
children had left him and his only companions were 
hired servants or sycophants who flattered him for 
favors. The farmer honored himself, had wife and 
children who loved and respected him and beyond 
these a host of friends who rose up to call him 
blessed. 

After half an hour's visit and the revealing of the 
main facts of each man's life the brewer laid his 
hand on the older man's shoulder and said : "Jim, 
you win. You were the wise man. I was the fool. 
I have made money, — more than we talked of, — 
but I have lost everything else. I would gladly 
sink all my money to the bottom of the sea if I 
could buy back my self-respect, my family and my 
health. But it is too late. I deliberately chose the 
wrong path. Now I must walk in it to the end." 

The temptation to this path was not greater to 
one than to the other. Both knew its danger. Both 
knew they should not enter it. The man who re- 
fused the lure was stronger from that day than he 
would ever have been without it. His friend was 
weaker and slighter temptations overcame him. He 
went from weakness to weakness while his wise 
friend went from strength to strength. 

Force your temptations to serve you. Use them 
as stepping-stones to mount to higher things. If 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

this world is ever saved it will be by the power of 
God working through strong Christians, tested 
Christians, proved Christians, whom all the flattery 
and lure of the world cannot win from the straight 
and narrow path. 

The crown of life is the reward of wisdom in this 
realm. "Blessed is the man that endureth tempta- 
tion; for when he hath been approved, he shall 
receive the crown of life." This promised boon 
looks not alone to the future. To the man who suc- 
cessfully resists temptation is given the crown of 
the highest life in this world. He is crowned as a 
man worthy of honor by God himself ; he is crowned 
by his own exacting conscience; he is crowned by 
his fellow men. 

In increasing strength, in perfect self-control, in 
growing favor with God and man, the Christian 
who bravely resists temptation literally forces the 
hindrances of life to serve him, lifting him year by 
year a little closer to his God. May the day soon 
come when every Christian shall be in this blessed 
company. 



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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Twelve 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY PROPER SABBATH OBSERVANCE 

At no time in the world's history were men so 
conscious of the value of the passing hours as they 
are to-day. Every day is a treasure house stored 
with golden hours; every hour a jewel case filled 
with precious gems. An hour's study or reflection 
often turns the tide in a man's fortune; a day's 
labor turns failure into victory. Most of the world's 
decisive battles were fought in a single day. The 
power of Spain in the Western Hemisphere, which 
had continued for hundreds of years, was termi- 
nated in a few hours at Santiago Bay. 

Emerson was but trying to emphasize the im- 
portance of time when he said, "Every day is 
doomsday," but I prefer another sentiment which 
has grown up since the age of this thinker-dreamer, 
"Every day is New Year's Day." Every day opens 
a new period of time in which a life may strive 
to correct its mistakes and advance its higher 
interests. 

Oh, that we would prize every day as Browning's 
Pippa did her one holiday! Springing from her 
couch and rushing to her tiny window she cried in 
ecstasy : 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Day! 

Faster and more fast, 

O'er night's brim, day boils at last ; 

Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim 

Where spurting and suppressed it lay, 

For not a froth-flake touched the rim 

Of yonder gap in the solid gray 

Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; 

But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, 

Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, 

Rose, reddened, and its seething breast 

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world. 

O Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, 

A mite of my twelve-hours' treasure, 

The least of thy gazes or glances, 

(Be they grants thou art bound to or gifts above 

measure), 
One of thy choices or one of ihy chances, 
(Be they tasks God imposed thee or freaks at thy 

pleasure), 
■ — My Day, if I squander such labor or leisure, 
Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me! 

In this study I would talk with you about a day 
much more precious and full of possibilities than 
any of these — the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. 
The body and the mind have six days set apart when 
their work and play should be accomplished. They 
are important to the last degree. The world's work 
must be done, the secrets of nature must be dis- 
covered : "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy 
work." 

"But the seventh day is the Sabbath (Hebrew, 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

"Rest") of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not 
do any work." That commandment has never been 
recalled, but following his custom of telling us what 
we could do instead of what we should not do our 
Lord, by word and by example, taught that the 
Sabbath is the soul's day, on which, turning aside 
from our usual pleasures and labors, we are to wor- 
ship and do good to men. 

The glory of Christ's teaching concerning this 
precious time is contained in his phrase, "The 
sabbath was made for man." If the day was made 
for him and is not to be used for ordinary work or 
play, what was it made for ? What was it meant to 
supply? It is to his everlasting shame that man, 
who needs so much soul culture, should have failed 
to use the day set apart for this very thing, but 
should have spent the time in other and less benefit- 
ing labors. If I should ask a man to take fifty-two 
days every year out of the time he gives to building 
up his fortune and use them in chasing butterflies 
he would think me crazy ; and yet many a man takes 
the only fifty-two days a year God has given for 
the building up of his spiritual fortune and spends 
them in chasing golf balls or other equally elusive 
missiles while his soul starves for the bread of life. 

It is not a question just now of whether it is 
right for you to play golf or take automobile rides 
or study birds or botany on the Sabbath ; the ques- 
tion is : Do you spend your Sabbath at these pas- 
times to the exclusion of that soul culture positively 

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PROGRESS IX CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

needed to make you a worthy child of your heavenly 
Father? The permanence and continued elevation 
of the American people depend very largely upon 
their proper observance of the Sabbath day. 

We must not allow the day to become secularized. 
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Our 
six days of labor bind us close to material things. 
We till the soil, or we barter or we adjudicate dif- 
ferences, in all of which our animal nature is upper- 
most. Yet these things must not be allowed to 
dominate us. How is this to be avoided ? By giving 
the greatest emphasis to our spiritual nature on the 
Sabbath day. Other time might be used but seldom 
is, so that the soul must -gather up in one day suffi- 
cient heavenly grace to make us more than animals 
during our six days of labor. If we fail to use the 
Sabbath for worship and soul culture, if we continue 
our usual work or play throughout the sacred 
period, we have lost the spiritual uplift we need 
more than any other thing. 

Some surprising things have developed in connec- 
tion with closing the post office in many cities of 
America on the Sabbath. Before this was accom- 
plished and the thousands of letter carriers thus 
released, it was said that it could not be afforded; 
that so many more employees would have to be 
hired that the already large postal deficit would be 
enormous. Exactly the contrary has proved true. 
The men are able to give so much better service 
working six days than working seven, that the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

service is more efficient and the deficit less. It was 
said that business could not be carried on without 
Sabbath mail delivery, but not one house has failed 
on account of the change and, as a matter of fact, 
it has not created a ripple on the surface of our 
commercial and industrial life. Few firms now call 
for their mail at all on the Sabbath and those which 
do are not in a business that demands a seven-day 
delivery. 

Instead of robbing this precious day of its peculiar 
nature America will be wise if she does everything 
in her power to preserve it. America does not need 
more money or more material success, but she is 
tremendously in need of more men and women who 
know God and are striving to cooperate with him 
in the elevation of society. Nothing will help more 
than keeping the Sabbath a holy day and observing 
it in accordance with its nature. 

Further, the day must be used more and more 
for the specific purposes for which it was given. 
There should be no uncertainty on this point. Under 
divine direction the people of God in ancient times 
used the day for worship and godly service. The 
teachings of Christ confirm this practice and em- 
phasize its spiritual significance. 

If, for purposes of clearness, we should specify 
a few of these duties and privileges we would doubt- 
less all name first : The worship of God in the sanc- 
tuary and the enrichment of our spiritual nature. 

God himself established public worship when he 
I7i 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

was giving the world models through ancient Israel. 
The people were not to neglect the assembling of 
themselves together both for giving united voice to 
their worship of Jehovah and for listening to his 
revealed Word read and expounded. 

Can reasonable men argue that there is no call for 
public assemblies, that men can worship God as 
acceptably as individuals, when the plans of God 
so clearly provide for public assemblies and for the 
preaching of the Word? The apostle has declared 
that by the foolishness of preaching God has or- 
dained that many men shall be saved. 

American history reveals several things that bear 
upon this point: "Where public services are not 
maintained and regular preaching is not provided 
there are few, if any, conversions to Christianity; 
where public worship has been maintained in former 
years and is now suspended (as for example in 
frontier territory or in down-town districts of great 
cities), although the population is more dense, no 
conversions are discoverable and the standard of 
manhood and womanhood falls lower; the masses 
of the people never rise to a more exalted concep- 
tion of God without adequate leadership, without 
hearing the Word of God preached and explained 
from week to week. Only where the public wor- 
ship of God is regularly maintained do the people 
eliminate sin and take on the Christian graces. 
"Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy 

172 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

him for ever," and where men do not do this they 
sink rather than rise in the scale of manhood. 

Furthermore, man's spiritual nature is in con- 
stant need of extension and enrichment. This is the 
nature by which we comprehend the things of God ; 
it is here we are in his image. When by acceptance 
and confession of Jesus Christ our spiritual nature 
is born, we are infants just as we were infants at 
our physical birth. We are creatures of infinite 
spiritual possibilities, but those possibilities will 
never be realized if we do not grow. For a man, 
confessing Christ, to feel that there is nothing more 
for him to do is to make the mistake of contending 
that to possess the size and strength of manhood it 
is only necessary to be born in the flesh. 

I have a boyhood memory of going one Inde- 
pendence Day to a great celebration ; at least it was 
great in crowds and enthusiasm and noise, which 
have come to stand for greatness to certain classes 
in America. I was fascinated by a gas machine 
which was being set up for the inflating of toy 
balloons. I had seen the beautiful blue and red 
baubles tugging at their restraining strings, eager to 
be off into the vast empyrean, and I rejoiced in 
their brilliancy and buoyancy, but when I drew near 
I was amazed to find that when started on their 
career they were neither large nor brilliant but re- 
pulsive little masses of wrinkled rubber no larger 
than my thumb. Surely those little, black, crumpled 
masses could never become the large, beautiful bal- 

173 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

loons that were aspiring to join the clouds ! But 
the skilled workman stretched the mouth of one 
over the machine's valve and shot it full of the 
volatile gas. Instantly it expanded, instantly its 
rich color appeared. The moment it was released 
from the machine, sealed and its string attached, it 
started to mount upward, beautiful as a rainbow to 
a child's eyes. 

My figure may not be absolutely analogous, but 
it is close enough for illustrative purposes. When 
we are born into the kingdom our spiritual nature, 
the most beautiful and the most permanent part of 
man, is a mere capacity. It is capable of infinite 
enlargement and enrichment but only one thing will 
do it. Worldly pleasures will not, material successes 
will not, even intellectual achievements will not, but 
the proper worship of God will. The proper ob- 
servance of the Sabbath day, a proper part in the 
public worship of God, a proper study of God's 
Word and right meditation on sacred things, kindly 
service in the name of Christ; these things will 
expand and enrich the spiritual nature, as the gas 
did my toy balloon of long ago, and will give it an 
aspiration to ascend to God. 

Every wise man knows that for the purposes of 
proper living his fast depleting body must be con- 
tinually recreated. God provided for this recreation 
in appointing this one-day-in-seven rest period. "Six 
days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work : but the 
seventh day is the sabbath, the rest day, of the Lord 

174 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work. Thou 
nor thy servants." 

It is not the sin of disobeying God by disregard- 
ing this commandment that I wish to dwell upon 
here. It may be said in passing : America will pay 
heavily in future years for her willingness to allow 
the Sabbath to become a day of picnics and excur- 
sions, of feasting and social excesses. The increas- 
ingly popular "week-end" excursion is fast becom- 
ing a curse. Instead of proper rest and worship 
thousands of our people further exhaust themselves 
by long distance travel and irregular eating and 
sleeping. One superintendent of a manufacturing 
plant testifies that it requires the better part of 
Monday for his men to recover from the excesses 
of the Sabbath vacation; but what I would em- 
phasize is the loss the disobedient one himself sus- 
tains and the benefits that come with obedience. 

The loss comes from prolonged strain without 
release. If we are not wise enough to see this in 
the physical world, the mechanical world will fur- 
nish sufficient illustration. A railroad company 
that sometimes seems to have no mercy on its men 
is exceedingly careful of its expensive locomotives. 
Visiting a roundhouse in the West a few years 
ago I saw a dozen huge monsters that had recently 
come in from trips of from three hundred to seven 
hundred miles. I asked the foreman why they were 
there, and he replied that they were resting. In 
response to my surprised look he continued : "Yes, 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

indeed, these engines require rest as surely as the 
engineers do. After a long, hard trip -it often takes 
from twenty- four to forty-eight hours for an engine 
to recover itself. Starting out afresh one of these 
one-hundred-ton freight engines will run perfectly 
for from five hundred to a thousand miles. Then 
things will begin to go wrong; either something 
breaks or they refuse to make steam and we have 
to send them to the roundhouse. After a Vest day' 
they are as good as ever again." Many a man who 
says he cannot afford a Sabbath's rest is making 
slow progress to-day or is actually breaking down 
for want of the wisdom a railroad company displays 
in getting the highest efficiency out of its machinery. 
But here as elsewhere the best side is affirmative. 
Many a business and professional man has quad- 
rupled his efficiency by beginning to observe strictly 
the spirit of rest and change of occupation suggested 
by the Christian Sabbath; who says, in the spirit of 
the ancient singer, 

"Return unto thy rest, O my soul, 
For Jehovah hath dealt bountifully with thee." 

It requires actual practice to demonstrate the truth 
of this contention. 

The story is told of a certain lawyer in the West 
who in his early years felt that he could not afford 
to take a Sabbath rest. Released from office and 
courtroom, he would pore over his books. He 
wished to specialize in Insurance Law and felt that 

176 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

he had only Sunday in which to do the reading and 
thinking required. When Monday came there was 
no spring or freshness in his mind or body and he 
went into court a worn-out man. He began to lose 
cases of a class he had formerly won, and now and 
then had attacks of indigestion that compelled him 
to give up his work for days at a time. Finally he 
determined to try God's plan. He opened no law 
book on the Sabbath day. He returned to the house 
of God from which he had absented himself for 
years ; he took the super intendency of the local Sun- 
day school. In the afternoons he would visit the 
sick or go with his children for a quiet walk in the 
woods. Xo thought of court or law was enter- 
tained for one moment. In two months he was a 
changed man. He regained his health and, incident- 
ally, the respect of his own conscience. His mind 
cleared and his body regained its spring. His 
former skill in court returned and quickly doubled. 
To a friend one day he said : "When I started out 
to practice law I thought I knew better than God 
did how to employ my time, but I have concluded 
now that he knows best. I keep the Sabbath, and 
from a purely health and financial standpoint, — 
to say nothing of its spiritual benefits, — it is the 
best investment I ever made." 

I wonder if others are not making this lawyer's 
mistake. You want to get on, you want to make 
money faster, you want to specialize, to be a master 
in your line, and you think you can accomplish this 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

by robbing God and your soul of the Sabbath day, 
by defrauding body and mind of the rest and change 
provided by the Creator in his infinite plans. It is a 
serious and a costly mistake which you had better 
correct as quickly as possible. Both body and mind 
will have ten times their spring for one complete 
rest day in seven while the soul, the seat of wisdom 
and spirituality, will be given its rightful place. 

The Sabbath rest provides excellent opportunity 
also for the sharpening and enrichment of the 
mental faculties. All week long the mind must 
serve us whatever our work may be. In many 
cases its only refreshment is a hasty glance at a 
daily newspaper that tells of the sports and the 
tragedies of life. Perhaps the mind has been called 
upon to give out the whole week through, and has 
received little or nothing in return. 

A right observance of the Sabbath provides a 
change from all of this. In the house of our Father 
one hears the eternal verities read from the Word 
of God. No minister can be so dull as to have no 
message for receptive minds, and the vast majority 
of these worthy men provide a feast for their people 
every Sabbath of the year. The mind grows rich 
also by trying to give away a knowledge of the Bible 
to younger lives. Teaching is always accompanied 
by a reflex benefit to the teacher. Workers in 
Sunday school often attain high mental proficiency 
solely from their efforts to plant the Word of God 
in other hearts. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

But the greatest opportunity of all comes when 
the long afternoon and evening open and your time 
is largely your own. The mind seeking riches will 
turn to those immortal books that contain the lives 
of master spirits writ in their own blood. This is not 
the time for magazines and the "Sunday Supple- 
ment" that usually so profanes the day. It is time 
for a reverent study of the Word of God. It is 
time for the biographies of great souls, for a fuller 
acquaintance with church history, for a dwelling 
with those Christian poets whose songs have done 
so much in determining the character of modern 
Christendom. Would you be a master of Brown- 
ing? Give the Sabbath afternoons or evenings of a 
single winter to a study of his Christian poems and 
you will know more of him than the graduates of 
half the Browning Clubs of America. It requires 
slow, thoughtful study to master Browning. His 
meaning is clear enough if you will take time to 
think him through. Take John Ruskin's advice and 
study him "syllable by syllable, nay, letter by 
letter," and in any company you can rejoice in your 
knowledge of this great poet. 

Christian biography is a field almost untouched 
by the great mass of Christians, and yet it offers 
knowledge as well as mental stimulus and suggestion 
that is unsurpassed. Who is responsible for the 
Christianization of our ancestors in central Europe? 
What sacrificing souls checked the rising tide of 
Roman Catholic arrogance and the sale of indul- 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

gences for sin ? Who are the students and teachers 
who evolved the doctrines that stand at the base of 
the Protestant denominations? What choice spirits 
broke the bonds of Christian selfishness and began 
the missionary propaganda of the age? In the 
average company echo answers, "Who?" for, alas! 
not one in ten of our people know! 

Yet what fine knowledge that would be to 
possess. Would you not like to know ? Your Sab- 
bath afternoons of another winter would give you 
this knowledge, and you would have all the mental 
stimulus that arises from their heroism. By taking 
advantage of the freedom from week-day cares 
that a proper observance of the Sabbath day pro- 
vides, an earnest mind can pass from mediocrity to 
mastery in a single decade. 

During our Lord's earthly ministry he was once 
severely criticized for healing a man with a with- 
ered hand on the Sabbath day. He was amazed at 
the criticism and reminded the Jews that in crisis 
times in their own history the most acceptable ser- 
vants of Jehovah, — th'ose whom they took as 
models, — broke over all usual rules and did the 
things necessary for the preservation of their lives 
and the welfare of the kingdom. "Wherefore," said 
he, "it is lawful to do good on the sabbath day." 

His action recalls the remark of James that pure 
religion and undefiled is not only keeping oneself 
unspotted from the world but is visiting the bereaved 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

in their affliction and helping to provide for their 
needs. 

Within the circle of each life there will be others 
who need both thought and care. One will not 
start out to inaugurate charity work on the Sabbath, 
but it is surely within the Master's conception of 
the proper use of this holy day for us to comfort 
those who mourn and cheer and relieve the needy 
and the sick. "It is lawful to do good on the sab- 
bath day." 

I have left untouched in this study the great 
realm of the command of God concerning this day 
and our duty to perpetuate its observance in honor 
of him, and many others of the usual arguments 
for Sabbath observance. These all stand and should 
have their proper weight. So also should the fact 
that history proves that the proper observance of 
this day as holy is necessary to the perpetuity of any 
nation. I have led you into the realm of privilege. 
Let us observe the Sabbath not because we must but 
because we may. Taking full advantage of its 
benefits our progress in Christian culture will be 
marked from year to year. 



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Chapter Thirteen 

PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: 
BY DECISION 

Standing aside for a moment to gaze upon the 
passing throng on life's highway, one is attracted 

at once by the look of firm decision on the faces 
of the foremost. No uncertainty marks their gaze. 
If they seem unconscious of the throng against 
which they are jostling it is because their sight is 
turned inward — riveted upon a picture of action, 
the details of which they are each hurrying to work 
out. The rapid progress of this throng fairly 
dazzles the beholder. If the explorer must drive a 
line of stakes across the bosom of a glacier to dis- 
cover in the course of a few hours or days that it 
has moved, the observer of the great river of human 
life must watch closely lest, in a moment of inatten- 
tion, its appearance change so greatly that when he 
looks again he be not able to recognize his former 
object of study. 

Decision and progress go hand in hand. They 
are parts of the same whole. The one is never 
found without the other. If the roll of thunder 
must ever be preceded by a flash of lightning the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

rumble of progress must ever be preceded by the 
flash of decision. 

Man does not make large progress by the chance 
of fortune or misfortune. It is only after an un- 
bending decision has been made, backed up by all the 
necessary exercise of his God-given power, that he 
progresses. Without the decision of a general there 
would have been no unconditional surrender of San- 
tiago and the adjacent country in the Spanish war. 
Without the decision of an active brain and heart 
there will be no unconditional surrender of a citadel 
of indifference and uselessness in the life of man. 

The man who decides he will do a thing has 
largely accomplished it, for it only remains for him 
to work out details and the victory is his. "Progress 
by decision" is a theme worthy of careful study. 

Strangely enough, even in America, the question 
is sometimes asked, what does it mean to progress? 
Passing up and down the streets of our towns and 
villages one sees many men and boys to whom this 
phrase is absolutely unintelligible. By haphazard 
disposition of accumulated avoirdupois they are able 
to hold down a goods-box if no one drives them 
away and, once there, they exercise their spongy, 
perverted minds in constructing insults upon passing 
women and innocent children. Talk not to them of 
progress. There is no progress in earthly things 
beyond the limit of life. These men and boys are 
morally, and oftentimes intellectually and spiritually, 
dead already and should, by some legal enactment, 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

be buried away where their already disintegrating 
lives would not contaminate those still healthy and 
vigorous. 

But if, for the purpose of our present investiga- 
tion, it be desirable to define clearly the word 
"progress" we will find that, though a broad word 
and having such a large part in the history of the 
world, it is still a word of a single idea. That is 
the idea of going onward toward perfection: to 
make improvement, to rise, to gain, to grow, to 
advance; as we say, to progress in civilization or 
morals. No word is more characteristic of Ameri- 
can life than this. By it we are known around 
the world. To progress is to move from crude 
forms to perfect figures, to pass from the shadows 
into the sunlight, from uncertainty to sail out on 
the calm ocean of the surely known. It is to pass 
from the nomad to the civilian, from the wigwam 
to the palace, from a dark and uncertain past to a 
bright and intelligent present. 

Gazing on the shores of the new world in 1492, 
Columbus saw only forest and wigwam and savage. 
Gazing on the same shores four hundred years 
later visitors to the World's Fair saw rich cities, 
splendid palaces and highly cultured men. During 
this short interval Yankee decision and ingenuity 
had made possible a progress incomprehensible to 
residents of the Orient. China of to-day differs not 
greatly from the China of ten centuries ago, while 
America, as clay in the hands of a skillful potter, 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

has been changed from a rude mass into a splendid, 
soul-inspiring statue in one third this time. 

To progress meant, to George Washington, to 
pass from an unknown civil engineer in the wilds 
of Virginia to the founder of the American Re- 
public. To Abraham Lincoln, to progress meant 
to move from an obscure rail-splitter in the heart of 
Illinois to emancipator and first citizen in America. 
To Peter, to progress meant to pass from a fisher- 
man on the shores of Galilee to a member of the 
faculty in the university of Christianity. To David, 
to progress meant to develop from a ruddy shep- 
herd boy to king of Israel. To Moses, it meant 
to grow from a child hidden in the bulrushes of 
the Nile to one who received the decalogue direct 
from God. Such knowledge seems too wonderful 
for man, and yet as he sees it worked out year after 
year in the lives of men he is driven to realize its 
truth and the possibility of others making similar 
progress, but who, instead, are drifting with the 
tide. 

If men do not progress it is because they do not 
decide. Progression waits upon decision as the fast- 
bound buds and bulbs of winter wait upon the slow 
return of summer sun. Jordan reminds us that "the 
world gladly steps aside to let him pass who knows 
whither he is going," while we ourselves are able to 
see that the man of uncertain step is never able to 
cleave a passage through the throng. Large size, 
deep voice, glistening epaulets give not his strength 

185 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

to the commander, but it is the decision that has 
been reached within. This it is that gives fire to his 
eye, it is this that gives strength to every move- 
ment and instantly convinces his own army and his 
enemy that that decision is to be carried out. 

Against the thoughts of perhaps the majority of 
men upon the subject it should be said that true 
progress depends not entirely, or even largely, upon 
present power, either physical or mental. It is a 
most common thing for men and women to give as 
an excuse for their standing still, want of physical 
strength or lack of a well-stored, well-trained mind. 
It is a poor excuse and unsatisfactory to one who 
has studied even slightly the history of the world's 
progress. Milton was blind, Byron was lame, Pope 
was never entirely well. According to Bible his- 
tory Paul was constantly oppressed by some physi- 
cal ailment and still we see him progress from the 
brutal persecutor Saul to the gentle, brilliant, power- 
ful Paul the apostle to the Gentiles and author of 
some of the sublimest literature the race has thus 
far produced. Calvin was wretched physically, per- 
haps never enjoying a single day entirely free from 
pain and bodily distress, but in spite of it all we see 
emerging from that pain-racked body a system of 
truth which attracted the immediate attention of all 
Christendom and which will leave its imprint for- 
ever upon man's theology. Henry Drummond had 
little bodily strength, but he did not allow this to 
stand in the way of African exploration and rich 

186 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

utterance of uplifting truth. Robert Louis Steven- 
son, although driven to the islands of the sea in 
search of health, continued to pour forth song and 
story to the delight of an admiring people. 

Other things being equal, it is clear to all that the 
man o-f health may make more progress than his 
weaker brother, but all the strength possible to 
human beings will avail nothing without the decision 
of an intelligent will. The young and vigorous oak 
has made the decision to grow into a giant of the 
forest. There is but one way to stop its progress; 
that is to kill it. If men and women would start 
out with the determination to accomplish something 
worthy the race and the God who gave them facul- 
ties or die in the attempt, the race would shoot for- 
ward as a locomotive under double steam ; we would 
progress more in the next fifty years than we have 
in the past four hundred. 

Further than this, a firm decision looking toward 
the accomplishment of some worthy service will 
often do more than all possible medical attention 
and costly drugs in restoring strength to a weak- 
ened body. A man in the central part of Illinois, 
an elder in a Presbyterian church for twenty-five 
years, whom I knew as I know my most intimate 
friends, furnishes a most striking illustration of this 
truth. He had never been well, being obliged when 
twenty years of age to begin to- travel for his health, 
but he was a man of clear-cut decisions and change- 
less determination. He had neither physical strength 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

nor large mental training, but his power of decision 
was abnormally developed. Very early in life he 
conceived an idea in furnace construction and steam 
heating that promised large returns, but it had to be 
developed and placed upon the market, and he had 
neither strength nor means. In default of these, 
however, he had the power of deciding and deter- 
mining. As a result his furnaces were soon on the 
market and a company with capital had put him on 
the road to work up a demand for their product. 

Very early in his experience on the road he was in 
a railroad wreck which nearly cost him his life and 
left him a cripple for the remainder of his days. 
On one crutch, with frequent violent attacks of dis- 
ease, he continued his work both on the road and 
in the working out of other plans for the progress 
of his company. Their advance was phenomenal. 
Orders poured in upon them continually, neces- 
sitating a larger plant and more men. In the midst 
of this success another railroad wreck rendered 
almost useless the one leg that had assisted the 
crutch in his locomotion. But instead of stopping 
at this calamity he got another crutch and went on, 
more vigorous than before. He had now become a 
wealthy man and wished to see the world. His 
friends remonstrated and suggested the impossibility 
of a man in his condition taking a trip to Europe. 
Meanwhile he had ordered tickets and taken passage 
on a fast passenger steamer. Arriving in southern 
Europe he, with his wife and daughter, toured the 

1 88 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

entire continent, reluctantly leaving London after 
every spot of interest in the great city had been ex- 
plored. I venture to assert that to the day of his 
death he could tell you more of what is to be seen 
on a journey through Europe than any man of 
your acquaintance who has made the trip but once. 
But at last his hour seemed to have arrived. 
Racked with pain and unable to take food or medi- 
cine, this man, who had overcome every other 
obstacle in life by sheer will power, seemed yielding 
before the Universal Reaper. Friends and relatives 
were gatherd at his bedside. So weak had he be- 
come that every breath was now fanned into his 
nostrils by some loving hand. Dissolution was 
momentarily expected when, to the surprise of all, 
he rallied. Some said, "It is the final struggle 
before the going," but instead of that he continued 
to improve. Soon food and medicine were accept- 
able and the man rose from his bed and lived an 
active life for many years. In conversation with 
him almost immediately after the first rally I asked 
him what had brought about the change. "Well," 
said he, "after I had been allowed to stay so long, 
and when I heard how sorrowful mother and the 
children were at the thought of my going, and when 
I realized thajt death was near and I had never done 
much for God, I concluded that God must still have 
some work for me to do in the world and so' I de- 
cided to get well and I'm progressing finely !" What 
medicine could not do, what all the skill of trained 

189 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

physicians could not do, Decision gloriously accom- 
plished in the life of this servant of God. 

Tell me not, in view of these facts, that if God 
meant that you should be great he would have given 
you more strength. He most often chooses the weak 
things of the world to confound the mighty. A 
weak body, backed up by the power of decision and 
determination, will do more for the betterment of 
mankind than the strength of a Samson with no 
determining will behind it. 

It may be said, further, that the simple passing 
of much time has little to do with progress. Three- 
score years and ten would leave a person a physical 
infant and a mental blank if there were no decisions 
of the will toward development. Man often pro- 
gresses more in a single hour or a single day than 
in a previous decade. Better one clear-cut decision, 
made in a moment, looking toward a larger growth, 
than ten years of drifting through the routine duties 
of daily life. Progress is in direct proportion to 
the number and definiteness of the decisions we are 
faithfully carrying out. 

"Very early," said Margaret Fuller, "I perceived 
that the object of life is to grow." Commenting 
upon this remark and upon herself, James Freeman 
Clarke says : "She, herself, was a remarkable instance 
of the power of the human being to go forward and 
upward. Of her it might be said as Goethe said 
of Schiller, Tf I did not see him for a fortnight I 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

was astonished to find what progress he had made 
in the interim.' " 

Psychologists tell us that in every act of the 
normal will there are three distinct elements — 
motive, choice and volition. In the simple -act of 
making a gesture all these have a part. First there 
is something to be done. This furnishes a motive. 
The mind recognizes the need and immediately de- 
termines to meet it, but in what way? Several of 
differing degrees of appropriateness suggest them- 
selves. There must be a choice between them. 
Finally the mind decides that it shall be a right- 
hand gesture. It now remains that the volition be 
carried out — that work be actually done. Motive, 
Choice, Volition. The process is simple and uncon- 
sciously followed. The difficulty lies not here but in 
the painful fact that all too few minds ever enter 
determinedly upon the work of willing. Some fail 
to see the need and so are not moved to meet it. 
Many see the need, the motive is sufficient — but 
through indifference fail to determine to meet it. 
While still others see the need — choose between the 
various ways of meeting it and fail in the last 
element, the carrying out of the volition. 

All of these are they who are standing still — 
mere promontories upon the landscape, while the 
great stream of men and women who are hurrying 
to carry out their decisions rush past them as a 
swiftly flowing river. A huge bowlder retaining its 
position merely by virtue of its ponderous weight 

191 



PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

sees little — the same view every day. But the water 
in that river has already traveled a thousand miles 
and will travel a thousand more before it reaches 
the ocean. With every moment a new scene has 
opened to its view. It has flowed past cities, past 
farms, past hamlets. It has seen a thousand oppor- 
tunities to advance the interests of man and bring 
joy and gladness into the world. Here it flowed 
over a mill wheel and gave wealth and health to 
man; here it laved the roots of a mighty tree that 
had grown upon its hospitable banks and the tree 
gave denser shade and more beauty to the land- 
scape. Yonder it laughed and rippled and gave to 
a poet a theme for his song which shall long cheer 
the hearts of men — from source to ocean this happy 
progressive river sees and takes advantage of a 
thousand opportunities to better a needy world. 

The people who stand still are bowlders. To see 
them you must go where they are. They see no 
need for activity because they move not among the 
people who have needs — mere cumber ers of the 
ground that must be cast out before the husband- 
man can till his field. The people who progress are 
as the water of the river. In their swift course 
from infancy to age they are ever passing new 
scenes and discovering new ways of helping man- 
kind. They bring prosperity, they give health and 
life, they cheer, they inspire and the world is better 
for their having lived. 

If, now, some one should put the question, "How 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

may I, who have been standing still, begin to pro- 
gress? How may I, who have been a cumbering 
bowlder, become a life and joy-giving river?" I 
answer you gladly, "By deciding to do so." Defi- 
nitely, positively decide to progress and then bend 
every energy toward the carrying out of that 
decision. There are no insurmountable obstacles 
in America to prevent men from progressing. If 
you are not doing so be assured the blame rests 
entirely upon your own shoulders. Replying to the 
complaint of a young man that he had no money 
and therefore could not go to college, David Starr 
Jordan, president of Leland Stanford University, 
said tersely: 

This is nonsense ! If you have health and strength and no 
one dependent upon you, you cannot be poor. There is in 
this country no greater good luck that a young man can have 
than to be thrown on his own resources. The cards are 
stacked against the rich man's son. Of the many college men 
who have risen to prominence in my day very few did not 
lack for money in college. The young men who have fought 
their way, have earned their own money and know what a 
dollar costs, have the advantage of the rich. They enter the 
world outside with no luxurious habits, with no taste for 
idleness. It is not worth while to be born with a silver spoon 
in your mouth when a little effort will secure you a gold 
one. The time, the money the unambitious young man 
wastes in trifling pursuits or in absolute idleness will suffice 
to give the ambitous man his education. The rich man's son 
may enter college with better preparation than you; he may 
wear better clothes; he may be graduated younger; but the 
poor man's son can make up for lost time by greater energy 
and by the greater clearness of his grit. He steps from the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

commencement stage into no uncertain world. He has already 
measured swords with the great antagonist and the first 
victory is his. It is the first struggle that counts. But, he 
adds, it is not poverty that helps a man. There is no virtue 
in poor food or shabby clothing. It is the effort by which 
he throws off the yoke of poverty that enlarges the powers. 
It is not hard work, but work to a purpose that frees the 
soul. 

Then, fearing the charge of stating untried 
theories, Dr. Jordan continues : 

Do not say that I am expecting too much of the effects of 
a firm resolution, that I give you advice which will lead you 
to failure; for the man who will fail will never make a 
resolution. 

From this clear illustration from so high an 
authority we may see that whatever worthy ambi- 
tion, within the possibilities of human attainment 
there may be before you, may be largely realized if 
you firmly, positively, with consent of all your 
present faculties, determine that you will accom- 
plish it. 

After the first firm positive decision to progress 
has been made there is indeed much to be done. 
When the water in a mountain spring decides to 
flow to the ocean it would never leave its stony 
cradle if it did not begin at once to adjust itself to 
new conditions. Now it must flow swiftly over 
jagged, heartless rocks, now it must flow slowly 
along a nearly level plain, now shoot a dangerous 
rapid, now plunge over a lofty precipice, all the time 
adjusting itself to new conditions and requirements 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

but, having once decided to flow to the ocean, these 
changes are but trifles, but working out the details 
of a rare accomplishment. So the life that decides 
to start toward success must be ready to make a 
thousand other decisions that will help on the 
progress. Here an important point must be yielded, 
there a stand must be taken, now you must go 
swiftly but anon your pace must be slackened, all 
the time you must be able and gladly willing to 
adjust yourself to new conditions that your great, 
shining goal may be attained. 

It is a small thing for a hare to turn a corner 
if by so doing he escape the jaws of the fast pur- 
suing hound. It is a small thing for a young man 
to give up a habit if by so doing he escape the 
devouring jaws of oblivion. You may say it is 
not wrong for you to smoke a cigarette but, if it 
makes your hand too shaky to wield properly the 
pen to-morrow it is standing like a stone wall in 
front of your progress. You may say it is not 
wrong for you to enjoy social life, to stay out late 
at night and indulge in fatiguing pastimes and eat 
late suppers, but if doing SO' robs you of proper 
rest, beclouds your brain, weakens your power, the 
current of your progress will flow slowly indeed, 
and if you watch not will soon become a stagnant 
pool. Once having decided to attain a ground, to 
win a victory, be willing to decide all minor matters 
in such a way as that they will do most to help 
you achieve your coveted victory. 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

Toward what shall our first great decision look? 
Upon this will depend the whole trend of our lives. 
Falling on one side of a promontory on the border 
between the United States and Canada a drop of 
water will enter the St. Lawrence and flow eastward 
toward the Atlantic Ocean ; falling on the other side 
of the same promontory another drop will enter the 
Mississippi and flow southward to the Gulf of 
Mexico. 

Deciding to accomplish selfish ends, one man 
may go on until he becomes as rich as Dives — and 
as cursed. Deciding to accomplish higher ends for 
the betterment of man, one may go on until he be 
as wealthy in service as Paul — and as blessed. 

The decision of the prodigal is the "priceless 
decision" : "I will arise and go to my father." 
Would that this might be the "supreme decision" 
of every man and woman in the world. The poor, 
hapless, worthless, young vagabond did not decide 
to "arise and go toward wealth" nor to "arise and 
go toward fame," nor to "arise and go toward 
personal happiness," but "I will arise and go to my 
father," and all these things were added unto him. 
Taking their portion of the Father's goods, — of 
w r ealth, of faculty, of opportunity, — many men have 
wandered far from the Father's house and wasted 
their substance in riotous and worse than useless 
living. The fair image with which they started, 
the rich inheritance of noble birth, is marred beyond 
recognition by the thriftless, debasing life they have 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

been living. For them, for us, for all men every- 
where, the first great sweeping decision to make is 
"I will arise and go to my father." Knowing of 
this, the great Father's heart will leap for joy, and 
"while we are yet afar off" he will come out to 
meet us with the best robe and ring and falling 
upon our necks will give us the kiss of joy and 
welcome. Call now the neighbors in, kill now the 
fatted calf, provide education, provide wealth, pro- 
vide happiness, "for this my son was dead, and is 
alive again; was lost, and is found." 



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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 



Chapter Fourteen 

THE TIME LIMIT ON CHRISTIAN 
PROGRESS 

The perfection of God himself is set Defore man 
as an attainment entirely possible for him. The 
thought fairly staggers the human mind. From 
the summit of the delectable mountains of revelation 
shines his ineffable glory. He is infinite, eternal 
and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holi- 
ness, justice, goodness and truth. Not only so, but 
his heart is a heart of love and he yearns over his 
earthly children as a mother over her first-born. 
What can the Saviour mean when he commands us 
to be like him ? to be perfect as he is perfect? 

This cannot mean that we are called to equal God 
in understanding or in achievement, and so it must 
mean that in the development within us of qualities 
that are godlike, purity, sympathy, love, forgive- 
ness, we shall reach perfection to the measure of 
human possibility; perfect in our place as our 
heavenly Father is perfect in his. 

No man should pale before this call because it 
is difficult; he should be stimulated by it to the 
utmost endeavor because of its magnificence. To 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

be godlike in personal purity, in the exercise of 
love, sympathy, forgiveness, were an accomplish- 
ment beside which all others sink into insignificance. 
God measures man by character, not by earthly 
accomplishment. Therefore equal, surpass if you 
can, other men in achievement, but strive to equal 
God in character. 

How great a thing it is that God has willed this 
boon for us ! How amazing that he should make 
it easier for us to attain perfection in character 
than to achieve any other thing! How marvelous 
that all his instructions should have been supple- 
mented by an example in human flesh, putting the 
fact of human perfection beyond all question and 
making it easy for us to understand and apply his 
revelation ! How stimulating that, as it were, from 
the walls of Zion he should call out to all men : "My 
children, I am watching you. I would have you 
grow strong and rich in learning and character for 
your own good until you attain unto the measure 
of the stature of the fullness of my Son." 

Before the great Torso in the Vatican galleries 
at Rome, the marble that taught Michelangelo 
to be a sculptor, masters still take their pupils. The 
perfection of the whole is pointed out. It is turned 
about on its movable pedestal that every line and 
curve may be seen to best advantage, and when 
the eye has gathered all there is for it, the delicate 
fingers of those quick students finally touch the 
marble itself. Through sensitive nerves there flows 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

to the brains of eager souls new perfections until, 
when with reluctance they move away, it is only to 
go back to their studios and more nearly approach 
in their creations the perfection of the greatest 
marble in Rome. 

Similarly God would have us study the perfection 
of Jesus very closely. He is the great example. 
If we will live as he did we will satisfy God wholly. 
First, we are to see him as a fact of history, mighty, 
pivotal, central; the God-man whose character and 
whose work forever changed the course of human 
events and made possible the redemption of a re- 
bellious and selfish people. Then we are to listen 
to his words and give consideration to his teaching. 
When such a character speaks, it is with authority, 
and all men should hear and heed. His words are 
golden and hold for men the riches of life. Then 
we are to begin to exercise his virtues ; to feel with 
him the needs of men, the distress of the sorrow- 
ing, the joy of the victorious. 

Having seen and dwelt upon the perfection of 
Jesus, we are called to bring our own life structure 
up to the Saviour's standards and walk with him 
in the holiness of God. Surely God has paid man 
no higher compliment than this, that he counted us 
worthy to walk with him in perfection of character ! 
Perhaps now we can better understand the Psalmist 
when he cried : 

For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
And crownest him with glory and honor. 
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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

In view of all this stimulation, this gracious and 
abundant assistance, it is disappointing that man's 
progress toward perfection in character is so pain- 
fully slow, that in some generations he seems 
actually to slip backward more than he moves for- 
ward; that in spite of the glory of righteous living 
there are still many men who love "the darkness 
rather than the light," who make no attempt to 
attain unto the perfection of character revealed as 
a possibility in Jesus Christ. 

By no means can all of this failure be laid at 
the door of ignorance. The heathen world is not 
alone in sin. The first page of a single issue of a 
cosmopolitan daily newspaper a few months ago 
told of a college professor on trial for the murder 
of his wife; of the president of a great state educa- 
tional association being sent to the penitentiary for 
misappropriation of funds ; of three leading New 
York bank officials who had been given long prison 
terms for wrecking their institution by self-benefit- 
ing high-finance. It cannot be laid at the door of 
ignorance of the call to higher Hie or how to meet 
it that otherwise good people will nurse misunder- 
standings to the point of family or neighborhood 
feuds often simply for the satisfying of a little 
wounded pride; that some cherish hatred against 
their neighbor until that hatred reacts upon them- 
selves, ruining their disposition and preventing char- 
acter development. Their action is like that of a 
species of serpent that, finding itself in an unbear- 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

able, situation, will suddenly turn and sting itself to 
death; men are not ignorant when they vote to 
sustain institutions whose harmful influence is uni- 
versally confessed and which stand like yawning 
gulfs before our easily influenced boys and girls. 

No ! Indifference has drawn a veil over our eyes 
and selfish lusts have dulled our consciences; the 
clink of money has filled our ears and slavish fear 
has sealed our lips and we creep along mere pygmies 
in character when God intended us to be giants! 
We wade in mire up to our knees when God in- 
tended us to walk upon streets paved with gold! 
Why are we willing to do it ? 

We are all very sure "that before it is too late we 
are going to reform. We know this evil living is 
ignoble; that it is unworthy. Without saying it in 
words, our feeling is that as soon as we have in- 
dulged ourselves a little more or gained a little 
more money by unholy practices we are going to 
stop ; we are going to reform ; we are going to turn 
from our sin and evil way arid live righteously. It 
is going to be a glorious transformation. We have 
seen dull, rusty iron cast into the furnace, its dross 
all consumed, and when the vent is opened we 
have seen it flow forth a glistening, glowing stream. 
The change in our life is to be like that. It will 
be instantly noticeable to the whole world. 

It is the business of the messengers of Jehovah 
to stand upon the walls of Zion and as they call men 
to repentance and righteous living remind them 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

that there is a time limit on Christian progress. 
Even the earthly life of Jesus could not go on 
forever. When, after his triumphant entry into 
Jerusalem, certain Greeks asked to see him, Jesus 
realized that the beginning of the end had come. 
It precipitated a discussion concerning his earthly 
life, "We have heard out of the law that the Christ 
abideth for ever; and how sayest thou, The Son of 
man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man?" 
Then said Jesus in substance: Is it possible that 
even yet you do not understand? I came as God's 
truth incarnate. Have you not seen this from the 
life I have lived and the words I have spoken? 
Have these not drawn you to a higher life? I can- 
not stay with you always. Learn fast. "Yet a 
little while is the light among you. Walk while ye 
have the light, that darkness overtake you not." 

From this appeal of Jesus let us learn. 

First : That we do not know how long the oppor- 
tunity to correct our way of life and to make our 
peace with God will be granted us. Nothing is 
more sure than that our tenure of life is uncertain. 
How many men who go to their couch at night in 
perfect health are found by their families in the 
morning wrapped in the arms of eternal sleep ! A 
short time ago a happy company of seven were 
reveling in the beauties of southern California in a 
touring car. Starting to descend a foothill the 
brakes on the machine refused to hold. Faster and 
faster sped the huge monster with its precious and 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

now terrified load. The young girl at the wheel tried 
every expedient but all to no avail. Like a demon 
determined upon vengeance, the huge machine flew 
forward until, reaching a sharp bend in the steep 
decline, it plunged over the embankment, down a 
hundred feet into the ravine, pinning to instant death 
the company that five minutes before were so happy. 
We are sure of no moment but the present and 
should not leave vital things to be attended in a 
future on which we have no sure hold. 

Second : But if life itself is uncertain we must 
not shut our minds to the inevitable darkness of 
failing powers. Under the stress of heavy labor or 
sorrow, or following close upon some crisis, our 
faculties sway and sometimes yield. We are never 
the same again. A rich man in central Illinois spent 
a long life in the accumulation of a vast fortune. 
He always had spiritual aspirations, but inasmuch 
as his business methods were not Christian he kept 
crushing his higher life down, saying that when he 
had made a fortune he would give himself to 
religion. The time finally came when he was forced 
to release his hold on financial affairs. He began to 
attend religious services regularly but found no 
satisfaction. Spiritual things were an enigma to 
him. He had no faculty with which to grasp and 
understand them. The body, which he had fed and 
pampered for threescore years and ten, demanded a 
continuance of the same attention. The mind, ad- 
justed to material things, could not grasp and 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

assimilate the things of the soul. No more pathetic 
picture could be imagined than this rich old man 
grasping in the dark for spiritual blessings and 
comfort which his lifelong selfish practices had 
rendered his faculties incapable of grasping or en- 
joying. I wonder if many others are not making 
the same mistake. 

The vital mistake men make is in putting these 
intended transformations off too long. In the early 
days of Nebraska, before the state was thickly 
populated, four youths left home for a winter's holi- 
day with a neighboring family some two hours 
distant. In gay spirits they tramped the distance 
in the morning over prairies innocent of fence 
or well-marked roadway. The day was spent in 
fun and frolic. By mid-afternoon clouds covered 
the sky and snow threatened. The wiser heads in 
the company proposed that they start home at once, 
but the less thoughtful scoffed at the idea and pro- 
posed fresh games. Gently the snow began to fall. 
In an hour all roads were covered and the shades 
of evening began to fall. Alarmed, the youths now 
made ready to start for home. Their friends tried 
to prevail upon them to wait until morning, but 
they said it was impossible. So out upon the plains 
in the fast gathering darkness they sped, sure they 
w x ould be able to reach home in safety. Soon the 
wind rose and the youths found themselves facing 
a raging blizzard. At midnight they knew they 
were lost and tried to find their way back, but the 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

snow had obliterated every trace and they could find 
no familiar object. The cold benumbed them. One 
after another they sank down while the stronger 
tried to arouse the weaker to further effort. At 
last all failed and, huddling together, in the awful 
blast they clung to each other until frozen in a rigid 
embrace. Their delay had cost them their lives, 
though they were never more than two hours away 
from home and friends. 

Hundreds of good men are but a step from the 
kingdom. They do not mean to be lost. They are 
keeping their lives well within the lines of respect- 
ability. Many of them are good, moral men. They 
know that morality and respectability will not save 
their souls, and they have definitely determined to 
soon take the final step by a public confession of 
Christ and so do the thing God asks all men to do 
to seture spiritual birth. If any such be reading 
this paragraph I cry out to you, in the name of all 
that is holy, what are you waiting for? If this 
thing is necessary at all it is vital. What more 
convenient season can there ever be than the present, 
when all your powers are normal and when the 
invitation to action is frequently and urgently 
sounded in your ears ? 

Third : But to these obvious things urging us to 
action, which a man may see by merely opening his 
eyes, there is another even more startling and com- 
pelling. In the early days when God saw that men 
were neglectful of their higher privilege and re- 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

fused to respond to his calls he said : "My Spirit 
shall not strive with man." What does this 
mean? Clearly that God at last accepts man's re- 
jection of his call to nobler life as final and the 
voice of his spirit no longer reaches the centers of 
his life. Impulses to righteousness pass by. The 
inner life ceases after a while to urge men to 
righteousness and they are allowed to fall to the 
levels they have chosen. I plead with you to respond 
to these calls while they are sounding in your ear. 
They will stop some day and possibly before you 
have made the corrections needed in your life to 
save you. 

Every observing man has lifted his eyes to see 
the ceaseless working of one of nature's greatest 
laws, "Every power that is not used is taken 
away" — and to see no less, in the life of man, that 
opportunities not taken suddenly cease to exist. God 
has made it easy for man to build a noble character. 
The way is clearly indicated, the opportunities are 
numberless, the impulses to do the right thing in 
any given instance are strong. Upon every man's 
pathway to holiness God has thrown a flood of 
light. 

A tiny dory was one dark night feeling its way 
out through the rocks of a dangerous harbor to a 
great sea-going vessel in the roadstead. Two 
anxious hearts were rowing. Success meant that a 
lonely man should join friends from whom he had 
been separated for months and go on with them 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

for a happy journey. But jagged rocks were nu- 
merous, the night was dark and the sea high. All 
at once a fortunate thing occurred. Anticipating 
that some such thing might be attempted, the captain 
of the vessel ordered the searchlight to play over 
the harbor. In a moment the struggling dory was 
sighted and from this time on a flood of light made 
its journey through the rocks easy. 

Similarly, on the roadway leading to the city of 
the soul, God has shed the light of his own revela- 
tion. Men stumbled once because they could not 
see the way, but they need do so no more. The 
way is clear and plain. Every man who wills may 
find it and walk in it. To the men and women 
already in the Christian church the appeal is made, 
Will you not rise up to the expectation of your 
Lord? More eagerly than any earthly parent he 
wants his offspring to be giants. To make this 
possible he has given us bodies that rebel against 
all abuse and call for health, minds that aspire to 
fullest understanding, souls that, at least at frequent 
intervals, yearn after spiritual perfection and satis- 
faction. The man who does not rise has loaded 
himself down with log-chains of inactivity, with 
dead weights of self-indulgence. If a man is not 
going onward toward God it is because he is allow- 
ing his pampered body to stand in the way of his 
aspiring soul. 

But I have said enough. Few Christians who 
read these pages need to be instructed. They know 

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PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE 

what is right already. They need only to be 
aroused. Let your soul have its chance. It is the 
soul that endures. Its richness and insight must 
have an influence on the degree of man's felicity 
and further progress in the kingdom of heaven. 
Be the spiritual giant your Creator intended you to 
be, and above all things make progress while ye 
have the light, lest darkness come upon you. 



209 



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